I don't travel light.

Tomorrow I am leaving for a solo trip that has taken on nearly epic proportions. I've packed clothes (and shoes) suitable for attendance at an academic conference (the annual meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society) which includes a banquet and a concert, clothes suitable for riding a subway into the city to toil at a microfilm reader in the research area of the Boston Public Library, clothes suitable for hiking trails as manicured as those of the stately Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the wilder Walden Pond area in Concord, and clothes suitable for the cool days and crisp nights (even in August) of the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont.
 
I've also packed my crate of fiction fragments, my writing journal and my sketching journal (and the required pens and pencils), some (but by no means all) of my 19th century research materials, my laptop word processor and the printer that goes with it, my coffee supplies (coffee maker, coffee, filters,  mug, measuring spoon, and dishwashing supplies), a book of writing exercises, maps, guidebooks, a new car CD player and some tunes. (The five Saint-Saens piano concertos will take you all the way across New York state. Two Beatles discs, Let It Be and Magical Mystery Tour, provide the theme songs for the trip.)

Even if my family wanted to come along or I wanted to pick up a hitchhiker, there is no place for anyone else to sit.

Back in June I decided, almost reluctantly, to attend the annual meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society in Amherst, Massachusetts. I'd gone in 1999 and thoroughly enjoyed it. But the subject this year, Emily Dickinson in Song, did not at first appeal to me. Friends from 1999 who were going talked me into thinking about it, and when I considered the fairly low cost (lodging is in Amherst College dorms) and the high potential for enjoyment, I decided to go. (I tried to get Ron to come along, but even though he loves music, the 20th century secular art song is probably his least favorite genre.)

I decided that while I was up there I might try to see the Boston Post from 1887 to 1889, the period that my research subject, William McCormick, worked there as a cub reporter. I'd done a project some years ago to transcribe and edit the letters he wrote his mother from those days, in which he mentioned the stories he reported. I learned that the closest place to see that material was Boston, several hours across Massachusetts from Amherst.

I'd planned only a few days in Boston, because of the cost of staying there, even in an outlying area. When I mentioned my trip on one of the discussion lists I read, a very generous member offered me the use of her house, just across the river from downtown and quite near Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Jerusalem of taphophiles. She and her husband were leaving for vacation the very day that I was to arrive, and they'd be pleased to have a house sitter. Thus my trip grew to take in the next week.

Then I decided that since I have to pass almost right through New Haven, Connecticut on my way home, I could stop at Yale University and perhaps take a look at archival materials from William's time there (he was the class poet of 1887) and visit the buildings where he lived.

Yesterday I found myself looking forward to the Amherst and Boston portions of the trip, but for some reason, not the Yale. Earlier this week I'd had a conversation with a friend about roads not taken. I woke this morning at 4:30 and knew suddenly that I didn't want to go to Yale, I wanted to go to Vermont.

The story of why the Route 100 Granville Gulf area of central Vermont holds allure for me is best left for the pieces I promise to write about my trip. 

Back in two and a half weeks. See you then.