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.Occasionally they see moose, including one early this year that Truchon watched lumber up to one of their lines, raise it with her nose, and then stroll underneath it.The one constant is the work: It's always hard.Forty pounds of tubing might not sound like a lot, but it grows heavy fast when you're climbing uphill, your feet sinking two and three feet into the snow.And then, when the pair arrive at a tree to attach one of the drops, they need to peel off the flaps of their hunting gloves--gloves in which the fingers extend only as far as the first knuckle, but have a special fold-over mitten--and expose their fingers to the cold.It's no easy task to link two pieces of plastic tubing in sub-freezing weather, and they depend upon a thermos of hot water to make the lines malleable.Yet the two men relish this time.It may simply be that the labor is profoundly different from their work designing electrical boards or machines that grind marble: It is certainly not sedentary, and no part of it demands a keyboard and a monitor.But it might be more than that.It might also be the opportunity to get outside while there's still snow and silence in the woods, and no leaves to canopy the trail from the sun.Soon the snow will be gone, and while these woods may not be densely aboriginal, they are deep and quiet and a pretty good stretch from a world of snowmobiles and skis.Here is not a bad place at all to savor the end of the season.Chapter 8.SELECT NUMBERS SHOW ACHANGING VERMONTTHREE WEEKS AGO I found the lid to my septic tank without having to avail myself of my neighbor Rudy Cram's wisdom.Usually the only way I find my septic tank lid is by digging for nine solid hours, having my wife flush a toilet seven hundred times inside while I lie on the ground outside with my ear pressed to the grass, and then--when all else has failed--asking Rudy if he knows where the septic tank is.When it comes to houses, especially mine, Rudy knows everything.This year, however, I actually found the septic tank myself.I didn't even need to wander around my yard like a somnambulant madman with a dowsing rod in my hands.I was very proud, and when I boasted of this monumental accomplishment to my wife, she observed that my newly found competency might have something to do with the reality that we've now lived in Lincoln for a decade and a half.Tuesday, as a matter of fact, marks our fifteen-year anniversary in this house in Vermont.In that period there have been enormous changes in our fair state, of which my ability to find my septic tank is only one.Depending upon whether one wants a VCR or a view, Taft Corners has metamorphosed from a cow pasture into either a convenient shopping mecca or a sprawl of cement bunkers.The Queen City's iconoclastic firebrand of a mayor has become the Green Mountains' somewhat more inhibited but no less independent congressman.And our legislative language is now peppered with wondrously provocative terms that meant nothing in the mid-1980s, including, of course, civil union.There have been a variety of more subtle changes, however, that in their own way are no less telling and bear testimony to the state's transformation.To wit:* In 1986, there were exactly six traffic lights in the thirty-two miles separating my home and this newspaper's newsroom in downtown Burlington; today there are nineteen.* Fifteen years ago, the state issued 91,039 hunting licenses to residents; last year it issued 83,593.* The deer herd numbered roughly 110,000 in 1986; today it's closer to 145,000.* Number of Wal-Marts in Vermont in 1986: zero.Number today: four.* Fifteen years ago, there were a mere 1,267 Vermont-licensed attorneys in the state; today there are 2,688.* The state boasted 3,044 dairy farms in 1986; today there are 1,565.* Numbers are less exact for emu farms.In 1986 in Vermont there was either one emu farm or zero; today there are nine or ten.* Fifteen years ago, there were 8,267 serious crimes in Chittenden County; by last year the total had fallen to 6,630.* In 1986, Vermont Public Radio had two stations and 32,000 listeners; today there are five stations and 160,000 listeners.* If you wanted a cup of coffee in downtown Burlington in 1986, you were likely to drop into places like the Oasis, Henry's Diner, or the Woolworth on Church Street.Now you're likely to visit Muddy Waters, Uncommon Grounds, Starbucks, or Speeder & Earl's.* There were approximately 310 country stores in the Green Mountains in 1986; today there are 210.And while the number of grocery stores has decreased as well, falling from eighty to sixty, the newer ones are twice as large as the older ones.* Number of snowmobiles registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles in 1986: 29,705.Number today: 36,077.And, of course, the number of hours it has taken me to find my septic tank has plummeted from nine to a fraction of one.This, in my mind, is an incontrovertible sign of progress.*PART VITHE CHURCH WITH AWEATHERVANEATOP THE STEEPLEChapter 1.A FENDER BENDER WITH BABY JESUS?I HAVE MANY FEARS, some more rational than others, but one is about to go away for a little while because Christmas is coming.For the next few weeks, I will no longer fear running over the baby Jesus in his creche.This is actually one of my more rational fears.Specifically, I fear that some day between mid-January and mid-December, I might have to pull myself together after a tremendous calamity has occurred for which I am responsible, and struggle over to the United Church of Lincoln and explain to the congregation, "Ummm, there's no good way to say this, but I think I just ran over the baby Jesus.I'm really sorry, but I accidentally put the car into drive instead of reverse, and you know the incredible pickup those Plymouth Colts have."This could happen.This could happen because my church's almost life-size nativity scene is stored inside my barn after Christmas, and it is stored about a foot from the front bumper of my car after I've parked.Add to this the fact that I am an incredibly incompetent driver, and some days I am getting into my car at six in the morning--a time of day when I'm an even worse driver than usual, because I haven't yet hooked up the intravenous caffeine feed that keeps me awake--and we have a prescription for disaster.Ironically, it was my lamebrained idea to put the creche where it is in the first place.About five years ago, the stewards asked if the church could store the nativity scene in my barn instead of my neighbor's, where it had sat for years.I knew this nativity scene well, I knew the faces of the folks in the manger, and they seemed like nice enough people.So I said sure, they could summer in my barn.What I didn't know was that the nativity scene weighed a little more than a backhoe.This isn't one of those particleboard nativity scenes, this is no spit-and-polish plastic affair.This is a nativity scene with a five-foot-high manger, wooden adults who have eaten well for most of their wooden lives, and a floor with an aircraft carrier hidden inside it to keep the thing stable when the December winds blow hard off the mountain.It takes six strong men to carry it the fifty yards from the church to my barn.For four years we put the creche in the back of the barn, on the wooden floor far from the car [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]