Lake Champlain
We all live with a profound sense of place, of where we are in the world, of where we reside. We know the land or the cityscape that we see outside our windows. We know the routes that we take as we move through our days, their physical details: a new flower or bush in bloom, a building built or removed, a vista that has opened up or closed due to the unfurling or falling of the season’s leaves. Some people notice more details than others, or take more pleasure in doing so, but we all participate in these daily acts of observation. We see where we are.
When we travel, our sense of place intensifies. We look more, or more closely. We search for images and patterns to map the new terrain in our minds. Some people say that this is the whole point of travel (for pleasure), to see something new or exciting, something we cannot see at home.
My husband and I have just returned from a place where my physical sense of where I was in the world felt particularly heightened, a place surrounded by mountains, views across islands, and anchored by the physical reality of a lake more than a hundred miles long.
Lake Champlain.
Its Abenaki name is Petonbowk, meaning waters that lie between. Between what and what, you ask. Between the lands of the Abenakis on the eastern side of the lake and the lands of the Mohawks in the west. The lake has been a crossroads of peoples for centuries, a meeting place of cultures and languages. Before the days of planes and highways, its waters formed a critical north-south passage and saw trade and war parties, smugglers’ boats, great American warships, and British ships of the line. Empires clashed here: Native American, French, British and American. The lake shores are filled with the remains of forts, with monuments to explorers, with the ghosts and spirits of the Abenaki and the Mohawk who lived here before the Europeans arrived.
Empires compete here no longer, and the old wars are done. There are still Abenaki and Mohawk, though in dwindling numbers. The border between the United States and Canada at the northern part of the lake is no longer contested, yet movement back and forth over this border is constant, and the lives of the Canadians and Americans who live north and south of it have blended. Montreal is the metropolitan magnet for the region, and one hears French spoken everywhere, from the Montreal neighbors who maintain an elaborate island summer home to the shoppers in Plattsburgh, New York who’ve come down from Quebec for cheaper prices. The waters of the lake are empty of war ships and smugglers’ boats, but the lake is still full of traffic: pleasure craft, ferries, and waterfowl.
Lake Champlain has been called the sixth “great lake” of the United States. It forms, for one hundred and twenty-five miles, the border between the states of Vermont and New York, and for ninety miles between Vermont and the Canadian province of Quebec. My husband and I spent a week in Grand Isle, a village located on the island of South Hero, one of the group of islands that fill the lower half* of Lake Champlain.
Grand Isle lies five hours to the north of Connecticut and with each hour we drove to get there, we watched the landscape change around us. Firs and birches multiplied. Mountains rose and folded into one another. There were fewer urban areas and between them many miles of forest, field, or farm. Rivers ran alongside the highway, their banks scoured and muddy from the recent flooding.
Once you get to the Champlain Islands, purple mountains rise in the distance to either side of you: to the east, the Green Mountains of Vermont and to the west, the Adirondacks of New York. Where we were staying, on the western side of South Hero Island, though we sat in Vermont every evening, we watched the sun set over New York State. Had we been sitting on our shore ledge on the morning of September 11, 1814, we could have watched the Battle of Plattsburgh, one of the most consequential naval battles of the War of 1812, take place across the water in Plattsburgh Bay.
In Grand Isle, the Canadian border lies only half-an-hour to the north. We were told that if we wanted to go to Canada, we should take the island crossing at Alburgh, which is small and obscure and avoids possible lines on the highway. No matter how quiet or inconsequential a crossing, the signs for entry into another country, the signs in another language, the sense of one world ending and another one beginning all combine to quicken my pulse. Though we had brought our passports with us and discussed many things we might do in Canada, in the end, there was more than enough to occupy us on the American side. We went into Burlington and took a boat cruise on the lake. We ascended the hills southeast of Enosburg to wander a sculpture park. We toured the old Ticonderoga steamer that has sat placidly in the middle of a meadow in Shelburne since 1955. We took the ferry to Plattsburgh to a history museum and had lunch at a lovely restaurant called The Twisted Carrot.
On South Hero, we bought produce at the local farmer’s market, watched the Green Mountains soften and grow purple in the dusk from the windows of the dining room of North Hero House, and tracked innumerable ducks and geese as they swept up the lake in dramatic Vs after sunset or swam placidly home for the night in an orderly line. We sat amongst the rabbits munching on early-morning clover and the butterflies feasting on wild thistle in the sun. We turned the air conditioner off and opened the windows, listening to the wind in the firs and the low hum of the Plattsburgh ferry as it made its way to and from Cumberland Head. We reveled in being in a different place from the one we live in, not totally different, not completely exotic, but not the same either, a place with a unique human and natural history.
We plan to stay on the Champlain islands again next year, to return to the evening waterfowl and the early morning rabbits, to the sunsets over the Adirondacks and the sunrises from the Green Mountains of Vermont. We plan to return to the stories and narratives of a borderland that once heard the boom of great naval battles and felt the passage of armies, but whose peace is now palpable, a place that lies quiet under the rays of the rising or setting sun, a place where people come for the silence and the bounties of spirit that this silence provides.
* Lake Champlain flows north, therefore the lower end of the lake is also the northern end.
Lovely piece of writing, Linda! Good to celebrate beauty that is a car trip away, rather than a distant destination that used to much energy (both fuel and the standing in airport lines kind!). Super to highlight the history of the lake, too!
I am all about destinations that are a car ride away these days. Very down on airport chaos (often due to climate change related weather events) and on the waste of the jet fuel and the pollution it causes. The great thing is that it doesn’t feel limiting at all. There is so much around us.
Great article Linda, I was born and raised in Burlington, on Lake Champlain, it is a beautiful spot with the best sunsets in the world,
I had no idea that you’re from up there!
You’re right. It has the absolute best sunsets. and plenty of other great stuff.
It sounds spectacular and the drive sounds virtually painless, as painless as five hours in a car can be.
Ah! But the drive is strategically broken at Brattleboro’s fabulous food co-op where we load up on goodies and have a snack.
Lovely piece, Linda. I felt like I was there. Your writing brought it alive.
So beautifully written with depth and sensitivity, Linda.
Thank you!
As I read this, I felt like I was on vacation with you. Thank you for taking me away from all this.
I do what I can!
Lovely – you took me to that beautiful, peaceful place!
Being an airline brat, I never thought I”d say this but I’m with you about avoiding the chaos and hassle of airports and airplanes . I’ve grown to really enjoy car trips.
Thank you Linda.
Another lovely article. Bravo
You have encouraged me to add Lake Champlain to my list. It’s been many years since we were there.