Why drive a car when you have a motorcycle?

I needed to be in Brattleboro, a town on the other side of the state, for an afternoon meeting. Mike had the afternoon free, so we rode the BMW.

Traveling west to east across southern Vermont means crossing the Green Mountains, which of course means lots of curves, steep grades, passing through small towns centered with a white-steepled church, and old stone walls lining the roads and defining pastures and farmland both old and new.

As we rode along Route 30 over to Brattleboro and back, I was on the look-out for stone walls. Some are overgrown this time of year with grass and small trees, making them difficult to spot. Others wind their way through wooded areas, which in the 1800's were most likely fields and pastures during a time when much of Vermont was deforested. New stone walls can be found defining borders around new houses, and old stone walls are rebuilt and renewed on historic properties.

Thanks to the motorcycle, a simple trip to a meeting in a town about one hour away becomes a musing on the past, thoughts about how Vermonters learned to use whatever materials were available, and dreams about the folks who built those stone walls.

And of course we stopped for ice cream on the way back home!