Reopening the window on our life in rustic Vermont

Back when you earned street cred for eating organic peanut butter or plastering daisy decals and "Question Authority" bumper stickers on your VW bus, we lived for a year in Vermont.

It was a grand and revealing time up there in the pastureland of Groton, near the New Hampshire border.

A fair amount of personal discovery is apt to take place if you put a suburban family of six - wife, husband, four kids - in a place where temperatures dip to 30 below and cows stare with sleepy curiosity into your living room window. Splitting wood and slogging through mud may be soul-reviving activities, but the splitter and slogger may wonder, gee whiz, is this really me?

It turned out that, no, it wasn't, and our little band of dropouts departed Old Peacham Road and said goodbye to the Murrays, farmer-friends up the road who for nearly a year made sure the hapless outsiders did not disappear into a snow bank or incinerate half the state trying to coax heat from the potbelly stove.

At home again in New York, we were congratulated by friends for giving the alternative lifestyle a try, and if they privately said to one another, "I told you it was nuts in the first place," we never found out.

That year is a marker in our lives and, to this day, even the word "Vermont" can cause a peculiar achiness of throat and mistiness of eye as this New England deportee wonders where the time has gone.

Out of nostalgia or homing instinct or the overpowering need to score a bag of maple-glazed doughnuts (What's Lipitor for, anyway?), my wife, Eileen, and I recently headed back as we have just a few times over the years - back to the hills and brooks and blazing sugar maples, to the small towns and winding roads and solid, taciturn folks who, I always thought, see all people as brothers and sisters, even if they don't necessarily like everyone in the family.

We didn't have time this trip to reach Groton and thought we'd stop for the night in Bennington, famous for its expensive college and pretty surroundings.

Turned out though that the place was packed - annual garlic festival in full swing - and, darkness now falling, we found ourselves on Route 7A in search of lodging. Motels were the time-capsule type, little mom and pop operations without the bright lights and big signs of Hampton Inn or Courtyard by Marriott. I'm not much on rustic accommodations but it was late and we were tired.

Just south of Manchester, we found a room - musty, dark paneling, vase on the sideboard holding six feathers instead of the floral bouquet that might have been waiting at the famous and fancy Equinox resort a few miles ahead.

To freshen our funny room, we opened windows front and back and - way better than a psst! of Glade - swapped stale air for sweet. We stood outside and gazed at the hills, dark shadows against the blue-black sky. We sniffed the breeze, cool and piney, and remembered that, yup, this is how it was back in '75, all right, under the stars, hand in hand, cows ma-ooing in the distance, farmhouse windows aglow, winter around the corner, life full and fleeting, what a time.

We slept soundly at the motel even though, before bed, a chubby mouse tumbled onto the counter of the efficiency kitchen and hopped through a hole in the paneling. At the Holiday Inn, we might have called the front desk to complain. But not here. Ah, we said, the country.

Next morning, we went into Manchester and found a doughnut place. The waitress - just a kid - was telling friends that someone swiped a wallet she'd briefly left in her car and that she was broke.

When we asked, she told us the whole story, a sad variation on the familiar theme of misplaced trust. We slipped the waitress a $10 tip and said good luck. Nice girl, she said oh, no, really, please, you shouldn't. We said it was our pleasure and I thought she might cry. On the way out we noticed that her boss already had set up a canister that said something like "Our little Pam lost all her money last night and has nothing for rent. Can you help?" The message seemed to me pure Vermont. A person had done something bad. Here was the chance to do something good.

We drove south again and spent the last night in Bennington, after all. We made it to the garlic festival, where I drank maple syrup liqueur and we watched kids romp in a playground filled with hay. People were nice to one another - no reports of wallet snatching. A band played country music. Folks made sure to put their plastic bottles in recycling tubs. Suddenly, a frosty wind swept by. Fairgoers pulled flannel shirts tight and snuggled into quilted vests and put arms around one another.

Shivering a bit, Eileen and I did the same.

We had dinner at a place with a view of the valley. At dusk, all was gold and green. Our quick trip was almost over. Next stop, home. We'd gone back to Vermont, and it was the same. Except for memory lapses and medical histories, I think we were, too.