Jennie and I just returned from a bucket list trip to New England to bask in the fall foliage. We thereby joined a pilgrimage undertaken annually by tens of thousands of “leaf peepers,” a term that sounds uncomfortably voyeuristic, but what can I say? We ogled unsuspecting leaves as they changed from their summer green wardrobe to their fall yellows, reds, and oranges. We oohed, aahed, and whistled catcalls as maples, elms, and birches denuded themselves before our peeping eyes. Leaf peepers? Guilty as charged.

Best views we had (I’ll spare you the pictures): 

• From the peak of 3,491’ Mt. Greylock in the northern Berkshires of MA.

• From Flatlander Trail looking over Equinox Pond at the base of 3,855′ Equinox Mtn. in Manchester, VT. 

• The late author Frederick Buechner’s house west of East Rupert, VT. Way out there.  

• The sun striking the golden dome of the state capitol building in Montpelier, VT.

• Lone Tree Point lookout at Shelburne Farm, Burlington, VT.

• Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of NH (think majestic fjords in Scandinavia).

• Cathedral Ledge (rock climbers scaling its 700’ face) overlooking Echo Lake in North Conway, NH.

• Bug Light Park in South Portland, ME (a too-cute mini lighthouse).

• The idyllic 1838 Harrisville General Store in NH (both inside and out). 

• The Finger Lakes Region of NY (I’ll take Lake Keuka from Branchport to Hammondsport).

• Height of Land, a scenic overlook in remote northwestern Maine. My hands-down favorite. The word stunning doesn’t do justice to the magnificent views of Mooselookmeguntic (best name ever) and Richardson Lakes southwest of Rangely, ME, not far south of Quebec. A long way away.  Out of this world.

Back home now in The Maple Loft, my writer’s den cozily ensconced in the canopy of our majestic maple yet fully green, I am sorting through miscellany I brought home from our 19 day, 3,000+ mile trek that wandered at a peaceful pace through 14 states in this order: KY, WVA, VA, Washington, D.C., MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY, CT, MA, VT, NH, ME, NH, VT, NY, PA, OH, KY. 

Miscellany includes everything from an artsy blue ice cream cone sleeve from Ben & Jerry’s (Waterbury, VT), a flyer from Whistling Man Schooner Company on Lake Champlain (our sailing sloop was cancelled due to high winds), a map of New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway (34.5 miles of jaw-dropping autumnal scenery through the heart of the White Mountains), a map of the Appalachian Trail (several stretches of which Jennie and I hiked or traversed in VA, CT, MA, VT, NH, and ME), a tin sign advertising Two Goats Brewery in Hector, NY, and a 12 pack of the Rochester NY Genesee Brewery’s Oktoberfest offering (sign above the bar in a Massachusetts tavern we patronized: “In Dog Beers, I’ve only had one”), my admission sticker from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA (where we ate lunch in what was “Alice’s Restaurant” of Arlo Guthrie fame – look it up), trail maps from state parks and nature preserves, a parking pass from Sunday’s Cleveland Browns game against the Cincinnati Bengals (the Browns lost … again. Sigh.), a golf club (long story), two t-shirts (The Harrisville, NH, General Store, est. 1838 and Graves Mountain Lodge in VA where Jennie and I spent our honeymoon forty years ago), a well-worn atlas (We were on some roads outside the range of cell phone and GPS), the worship bulletins from three friends’ churches, and a box of Maple Sugar Candy. Best of all, in ascending value: innumerable photos (massive visual doses of Vitamin A – Awe), my journal filled with pages of scribbled notes (a verbal scrapbook of our road trip), and memories of visits with friends and family from across Jennie’s and my life.                 

Wandered at a peaceful pace means we took what I’ll call a holy mosey. That means we (mostly) avoided interstates and travelled the “blue highways” – the two-lane state highways made famous by William Least Heat Moon’s iconic 1982 book by the same name. As Scott Hewitt, writer for the Clark County, WA, Columbian wrote: 

In 1978, Heat-Moon went on a huge clockwise wander around the outskirts of the United States as he was taking stock of a life journey that had suffered some grave interruptions. His marriage was failing, and he’d lost his teaching job at the University of Missouri. He left from Columbia, Mo., drove east to North Carolina and then stuck close to the boundaries of the nation and the back roads that connect small towns. The resulting travelogue he published in 1982, “Blue Highways,” spent 34 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was hailed as a modern classic.

Blue Highways was followed by a trio of additional travelogues: Prairyerth, in which the author traversed a county in central Kansas by foot and wrote 600 pages about a place supposedly “in the middle of nowhere,” River Horse, in which he traversed America from east to west by river (I saw his boat named River Horse during my year in Columbia, MO); and Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey. Least Heat Moon is a mosey-er par excellence—an observer of America’s backroads and byways and the real folk who live and work there.

Jennie and my holy mosey was an homage to his travelogues (I’ve read all his books) and in celebration of our fortieth wedding anniversary. We traded getting to destinations quickly for savoring the journey along the way. Practicing Sabbath travel, we slowed down, saw, and savored foilage, food, friends, and New England villages not accessible at 70 mph.

So it was that in Bennington, VT, we parked the car and wandered through the cemetery of Old First Church (est. 1762), a mosey rewarded by finding the gravestone of Robert Frost. On the poet’s gravestone is written “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” Frost's wife Elinor is buried alongside him. He wrote her epitaph. From his poem, “The Master Speed,” it reads, “Together wing to wing and oar to oar.” With all due respect to the poet laureate, I claim that line for Jennie for her helping me navigate the backroads of New England, parenting, and forty years of ministry.   

The only thing more numerous than leaves were a) political signs and b) the stories recounted each day as we sat at table with the friend or family member du jour with whom we spent the night. We weren’t sight-seeing as much as relationship-renewing. Most of the relationships Jennie and I revisited along our route are of 40-50+ years duration. My high school buddy Mike and his wife Susan have a plate on a sideboard in their dining room in Philly that reads, “Good friends are like stars … You don’t always see them, but you know they are always there.” That’s a line to say grace over! Indeed, the most precious souvenir we brought home is the time we spent in the cherished company of George and Carol, Jaynie and Brad, Mike and Susan, Stephanie, Nestor, Paul and MaryAnn, Liz and Matt, and Squirrel and Judy.

Taking this trip at this point in my life got me thinking about life’s so-called Golden Years.  Maybe deep down there’s a reference there to the Bucket List trip we all must make if we live long enough. The days of green leaves and surging sap waning (My friend and mentor Bob says wryly, “Linda and I are in that phase of life where everything is patch, patch, patch”), the autumnal change before us is the turning toward life’s denouement, the letting go, the falling to the ground, the return to our Maker. To the degree our years of changing and falling to rest can be graceful and grateful – a consecrated yielding – call them golden – a burnished leaf’s final fluttering mosey from branch to ground, to rest, and then …   

That being said, we got home Sunday night and are giving ourselves the five days of this week to wash up, clean up, straighten up, and pack up for our next adventure: westward to Fort Collins, CO, and an interim ministry at Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Have atlas, have GPS, have Jennie, will travel.  Colorado here we come.