The Pilgrimage North

The suburban pressure cooker expelled its multiethnic horde north. Laden with implements of leisure, bicycles, kayaks, canoes and camping gear; world weary travelers of urban and suburban bent surged north ever, north. Bucking, they wrenched in unison at road repairs, shunted into single lanes by flaming orange cones of warning like so many track horses at the gate. Tail bitten, truck locked windows up; the denizens drove forth cocooned in metal steeds seeking the clean air and open expanses, north. Few, freer souls dare the unfiltered air of the artery, north on motorcycles or in convertibles, hoods down, or windows down, blaring an enlivening mantra of sixties rock as they shimmied forward in the in the endless conga line of commerce, past urban blight. The trip north became a Chaucerian Pilgrimage from Nutmeg State to the Green Mountain State of Vermont. The border crossed, the sky opens wide-eyed, ridge rimmed dolphin gray clouds swim in a cerulean scene. Roadside picnic tables fill. Monarch butterflies flit in the breezes between majestic rows of pungent pines. The whoosh of traffic dulls and the robin’s call emerges over the roiling hills and gurgling brooks. Silence falls, complete; upon the entrance to the first gravel road. Heaven is immersed in the scent of fresh hay and sweet purple clover.