For much of my adult life, I’ve lived in the country Robert Frost called “north of Boston.” There were seven years in New Hampshire, now 36 in Vermont. And I feel pretty sure I’ll end my days surrounded by small villages, isolated farms, stands of maple and spruce, snowy fields, dry stone walls, cold running brooks, and lots of reticent people whose conversation often doesn’t run beyond “yep” or “nope.” To say I’m glad to live in this world is an understatement. This is home.
It was reading Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” when I was 15 that set me on the path that led to my adult life—I eventually became his biographer. I’ll never forget being stunned by these lines in that poem, which features a lonely man, a horse-drawn sled, and the dark and deep woods that surround him: “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” I fell in love with that voice, so lyrical and centered, and begged my parents to take a vacation in Frost country, and they generously agreed. We packed up the car in Pennsylvania and drove to New Hampshire and Vermont to have a look around. Needless to say, the landscape spoke to me, and it still does. In fact, it has become a conversation of sorts: I speak back to it as well, writing poems that reflect the world around me.
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