August 2018 – Obscure Vermont

A friend and I set out for a winter shunpike to clear our head from being lost in the mundane of seasonal blues.

Maplefields’ coffee in hand, we passed ice chunked streams, slid on muddy back roads over steep hills, and passed through still villages under alabaster gloom. It’s great to feel the lightning from these backroad GPScapades, coming to love certain old buildings, relics in yards or falling out of barns in various stages of dishevelment, or attractive geography – digging all of that character that comes with time.

Then we found this abandoned house. We parked the car, trudged through thick brush and snow while gritting our teeth at that howling wind, and found an excellent museum of the human condition – a decaying exhibition space dedicated to the science of atrophy. Any explorer knows that there is always a thrill of being in a place where then and now collide.

This house that used to be wasn’t in great condition anymore – progressively leaning in directions that destroy architecture. Relics regarding the former occupant’s proof of life still litter the now drafty rooms that shimmer with swirling dust – containing everything from antique fireman’s helmets in the stone cellar, paperwork and lots of birthday cards, tons of clothes, family photos, a very 70s kitchen, and unopened prescription pill bottles, all tangled up in a fragrant mildewy perfume. We even detected whole fragments of a former truck, curiously buried along the stream banks out back.

There was so much to observe here that I wound up making several wanders to this house, observing how much it changed with each visit. I assumed I had stumbled upon some great undetected spot – but my assumption was eliminated when I started noticing changes – some as subtle as items being moved around from visit to visit, others glaringly noticeable as certain antiques had been plundered, and some just amusing – like a cheap scarecrow with a Big Lots tag intentionally positioned up in a lower floor window, or one of several creepy dolls in the house being put in eerie arrangements.

I think the unknowns who visit these places after they become abandoned are almost as fascinating as the places themselves.

Since 2012, I’ve been seeking out venerable examples of Vermont weirdness, whether that be traveling around the state or taking to my internet connection and digging up forsaken places, oddities, esoterica, and unique natural features. And along the way, I’ve been sharing it with you on my website, Obscure Vermont. This is what keeps my spirit inspired.

I never expected Obscure Vermont to get as much appreciation and fanfare as it’s getting, and I’m truly grateful and humbled. Especially in recent years, where I’ve gained the opportunity to interact with and befriend more oddity lovers and outside the box thinkers around Vermont and New England. As Obscure Vermont has grown, I’ve been growing with it, and the developing attention is keeping me earnest and pushing me harder to be more introspective and going further into seeking out the strange.

I spend countless hours researching, writing, and traveling to keep this blog going. Obscure Vermont is funded almost entirely by generous donations. Expenses range from hosting fees to keep the blog live, investing in research materials, travel expenses and the required planning, and updating/maintaining vital tools such as my camera and my computer. I really pride and push myself to try to put out the best of what I’m able to create, and I gauge it by only posting stuff that I personally would want to see on the glow of my computer screen.

I want to continuously diversify how I write and the odd things I write about. Your patronage would greatly help me continue bringing you cool and unusual content and keep me doing what I love!

la cuna

n. a twinge of sadness that there’s no frontier left, that as the last explorer trudged with his armies toward a blank spot on the map, he didn’t suddenly remember his daughter’s upcoming piano recital and turn for home, leaving a new continent unexplored so we could set its mists and mountains aside as a strategic reserve of mystery, if only to answer more of our children’s questions with “Nobody knows! Out there, anything is possible.” – The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

I’d like to think this blog perpetuates the spirit of using your hometown or state as a playground – with the intent of experiencing things you’ve never experienced before, in a world which has largely been charted. Or maybe in some way, the credo of the San Francisco based suicide club, which was a 70s era underground social organization that coordinated rogue events and meetups in abandoned spaces – their motto was to live “each day as if it was the last”. They might also be the ‘original’ urban explorers, at least in the way of the modern day interpretation.

When I was in my teens and early 20s, I had an inchoate disposition and disenchantment with Vermont, when I was hungrily eyeing my friends out of state escapades to rambling abandoned asylums, industrial forests and galvanizing military ruins. Well, I’m still very into all that stuff. But…

While I did manage to plan a few adventures elsewhere, I had lost sight of the simple things I used to rely on, and the original spark that conceived this blog – what started my love of derelict sites and points labeled by people somewhere in the broad classification of “weird” – an edge I’ve always seemed to haunt.

Now I’m bringing it all back home again, re-chasing the excitement of discovery and the wonderment and burning fumes of seeing things I’ve never seen before, and trying my hardest to wander to unique content and that isn’t getting ruined on Instagram due to absurd amounts of tourism and deliberate belligerence.

There aren’t many things as enjoyable to me as going backroading with my camera, windows down and a Spotify playlist coming through my speakers. Autumn and coffee are added bonuses. There’s always a thrill and a grin when I cover more ground in the great state I live in – and I always love it when fellow Vermonters or Vermont enthusiasts reach out and share their own favorite spots.

I’m better in the spring when the earth begins to breathe again.

After that treacherous “polar vortex” that froze Vermont over for a few miserable weeks, a 60-degree day was ecstasy. So, of course, I went out exploring! Taking the the road less traveled as much as I could, I engaged in some blinding searchlight work, hoping to find something that would drift through my blood and bring the fireworks. And I did.

This old house, most likely built at the threshold of nuclear-aged development is now almost entirely consumed by mangy looking cedar trees that cast the odorous property in continuous chilling shadow – inconspicuous on a shitty road that slowly wanes from suburbia to meadowland. A sad eulogy for its once inhabiting family and a prototype of the dark promises of the American dream.

I couldn’t believe at just how much was left behind here. Some rooms seemed to be almost entirely furnished still. Family photos still lay in their frames on the walls. Personal paperwork was left in piles. Dishes, silverware, clothes, very 70s furniture, handwritten notes, all left for disfigurement to come in and nest. It makes you wonder why and how these places end up the way they do. I don’t think humans and the clatter of their chains will ever not fascinate me. I also realized upon leaving that parts of the foundation had entirely crumbled into the dank cellar below, making me realize that the whole house could have potentially collapsed at any point I was inside.

The title of this blog entry was swiped from a beautifully dark Elliot Smith song of the same name. I thought it was fitting, if not a little ironic.

I want to continuously diversify how I write and the odd things I write about. Your patronage would greatly help me continue bringing you cool and unusual content and keep me doing what I love!

Month: August 2018

The House By The Brook

House on Memory Lane

la cuna