As we made the turn to the cabin, our headlights caught the fur along the bear’s back. He had bounded off the bank, and fortunately he was quick, since he was too close for us to even see his lower body. Those pumping legs were totally hidden by the hood of the car.
Mom and I were headed up for a weekend at our cabin Pumpkin Rim. The road is one of the most adventure-packed roads I have ever been on.
Turning off from the main road, the dirt roads for the first few miles aren’t so bad. But when you cross the culvert and make the turn up Bouvant Road, life immediately becomes interesting.
There’s a steep climb, with a drop to a beautiful brook to the left, and a bank too steep to support trees, or much of any growth, to the right.
About 50 feet into the climb, the road takes a sharp bend to the right. At night, car headlights point uselessly into space. A driver just needs to trust and crank the wheel around to the right. Otherwise, that brook is there, over the bank, now straight ahead, and full of white water and rock
Once, farmers haying our field came down with a wagon full of hay, and didn’t make the corner, filling the stream with hay and dangling their wagon and tractor over the drop off. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Ilsley were unscathed, but it was dramatic, and extricating tractor and wagon was not easy.
Vehicles of size have made the trip. A friend of mine came up in a motor home, and at my niece’s wedding, an entire school bus full of her college buddies made it up, and down the hill. It seemed wiser to rent the bus, than to send 40 Middlebury students to their doom after a fine night of partying in our field.
The road beyond the sharp turn is pretty reasonable, but it is prone to wash outs. Ten or so years ago, on a night with heavy thunder storms predicted, my mother, sister and nephews opted to stay at Mom’s house in town, better for laundry and packing, rather than get my nephew launched for the airport at 6 a.m. from the cabin.
It was a wise choice. Robert and Rose, who live on the road, just below our cabin, called to let us know that there wasn’t a road anymore. For a few weeks we had to walk up the center of the road on a narrow path, balancing above 4 foot ditches on either side, gouged out by water pouring down the mountain.
A few years ago, Mom and I returned from a party one evening, driving into a downpour as we headed up Route 12 toward our turn off. The roads up to Bouvant were fine, and even the steep stretch was, but just below Robert and Rose’s house, there were deep ruts. Sliding on the mud and grimly clutching the wheel, Mom kept on rolling, and got us through a very rugged patch of road. Up at the cabin, bourbon in hand, Mom allowed as how she would ask Robert to get her car out in the morning . She wasn’t sure if she could do it twice.
In fact, Robert was out with his tractor, filling in the ruts when we drove down to leave. Since he and Rose have to get out for jobs and other necessities, and live there year round, he has to plow, deal with minor wash outs, cut up trees that fall across the road and more. We contribute heavily to the big overhauls, when loads of gravel are brought in, or there's a need for real backhoe work, but Robert keeps the road passable, unless taken by surprise.
Now, when I invite friends for music weekends, I advise them to get to the cabin before dark so that their first experience of the road will be in daylight. Adventure being one thing, disaster, quite another
When you make the turn off to our cabin, the one where Mom and I almost hit that bear, you leave a leafy tunnel of trees, climbing out into daylight. The field drops away to the right, and you can see all the way across the valley. It’s such a spectacular surprise that drivers will reach the cabin without realizing they’ve passed a pond on their left on the way up.
When one of Hannah and Tim’s wedding guests stepped out of the car at the wedding site in our field, her first words were "holy Shit! Was that for the view or the road? Probably both.
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