Bill Commerford

Vermont, White River, Little Vulture Mtn, Lilliesville Brook, The Shack:

]This is a 'look' from the back of a meadow high up Stony Brook road off Rt107.
.....See: from the power line cut over Little Vulture's shoulder, climb down
to the left along a path sloping 47degrees. You'll reach Lilliesville Road and Brook,
follow them downstream a couple thousand feet almost to where the power line
crosses them both, ours pointing up, pie in the sky, piece of Vermont.
On your left there's a cut in the hillside, you can only turn into as you're coming
down to the river. ..... Turn around in Dugans' drive and back down left.

we'd drive the '64van up into the hillside, then backing down into our campsite.
Pull the bedding and sleeping bags, pitch the lean-to tarpulin over them while
Kitty brews our coffee. Tara and Liam asleep in the van, the campfire flickering
over the kids and into our canvass angle, we had arrived.

Climb our logging roads, [Walt hauled hemlock over them their last time,
crossed now with dead-falls]. ....Scramble up at the top where old log skidding
trails are well overgrown. ...... Rest at the foot of a straight-up smooth slab-of-granite
called Woodchuck Ledge.
..... Next you'll bushwhack to where my easement lets in sunshine to thicken brush
growing at the leafy edging of a treeless band travelling up and over the dip in
the ridgeline, trimmed tidily where you cross under the power line on the climb
to Little Vulture's west face ledges. ..... Now, I usually start out and up from
the "shack', climbing up the path to the spring and then stroll along the
lower logging road ^here
....where the power line crosses both the Lilliesville Road and Brook is where
we pitched our first campsite.... Start here the climb to Vulture is quite staight up,
parallel to the powerline. [climbing the power line is much tougher, shoulder high
brush and switchbacking and bushwhacking just to find a spot to gain a few more vertical feet.

The summer after Walt passed, I spent the morning at his Memorial Pony Pull.
A grand gathering of horse vans, campers and their cars and trucks. Aluminum
awnings and armchairs spread beside trailers and RV's. Their folks and their
great teams of draft horses, pulling ponies, filled Walt and Annette Bryan's
Golden Nugget Farm's riverside meadow.

..... Later in the day I gathered my watercolors at the ShackI climbed to
Little Vulture's cliff face. I spent my late afternoon's 'look' either into
the gathering below, out to Twin Bridge at Gaysville, all the way up right to
Cobble House. It's near the White River's last sky-blue glinting in riverside eddies.
Here we used to be able to climb down from Rt.107 to "the Glades" Swim across
and dive from the cobbles granite ledges into cool deep pools.
..... Killington and Pico Peak are furthest. .....Mount Hunger catches the
Lilliesville Brook and carries Rt107 up past Gaysville. .....on the right
Vulture Mountain cradles Walt and Annette Bryans Golden Nugget Farm just about
up to Twin Bridge where our Riverside Road continues on to Cobble House Inn.

This is "The Shack" White River from Little Vulture Mountain ledges came by
climbing along trails on the slopes by the Shack or next to the Lilliesville Brook.
The White River watercolors are often about Gaysville's Twin Bridge, many are of
and from Cobble House, the "Glades" below.
Bethel, Vermont is the hardscrabble little whistle stop Railroad Station village.
Here's the railroad turns north to follow the Second Branch up to Randolph, Vt.

My nephew Al and I spent 45 days, a full summer in the woods of Vermont building it.
We had the designing help of Sam Clarke and he and his partner Larry Duberstein
and "Dog" their third set of hands... working with us during the week.