a winter walk around wilmington, vt

This sign is starting to pop up around Wilmington.  It's usually cloth and it's usually multicolored and it's usually flapping in winter wind: OPEN!

After a harrowing end to summer and a very work-filled autumn, it's looking like Wilmington is on the mend for winter, which is this area's busiest season due to its proximity to Mount Snow.

I was driving around today, an appropriately cold but gorgeously sunny and clear winter day in December, and I started to notice just how many signs either say "Open" or "Opening soon!".

It was a nice and welcomed sight so I decided to get out of the car and take a few pictures.

bartleby's books in wilmington, vt. december 2011.

Bartleby's Books:  This is a great little bookstore right as you arrive into Wilmington if you're approaching from the west.  We had visited the shop when we first came to check Wilmington out and I had fallen in love with it back then.  Unfortunately, it was totally destroyed in the flood, as their website details.  Crazily enough, the owners of Bartleby's also owned a book store in Brattleboro, VT which was destroyed in April in a giant fire that swept through the brooks house building downtown and closed several businesses.  It's been a wild year to say the least.

Bartelby's opened back up as of about a week ago.  We went in yesterday and it looks and feels almost exactly the same as it did before the flood.

Below is the sign inside the window of a carpet store just as you get into town approaching from the east.  I love the loud neon-ness of the sign.  This storefront was completely under water during Irene, and for the first few months we were here it was empty inside.

The building where Town Hall and the police station were housed is still gutted inside (they're both housed in an empty storefront next to the grocery store, for now).  On the side of the building, which is now decorated for Christmas, you can see the flood line.  the top line is 2011, the bottom is the last time this place flooded, 1938.  The 2011 line is over six feet high.

the flood lines on the side of town hall in wilmington, vt.
the 2011 line was caused by hurricane irene in september 2011.

the flood lines on the side of town hall in wilmington, vt.
the 2011 line was caused by hurricane irene in september 2011.

Along with "open" signs, signs like this one have started to pop up - Returning for Christmas! Opening This Winter!

'just bead it' aka beads needs in wilmington, vt - opening for christmas 2011.

gallery wright - reopening for winter in wilmington vt.

This sign started popping up everywhere early fall - "Wilmington - Where Amazing Happens".  They were absolutely everywhere for a time, and now they're actually beginning to be replaced by the signs that read "open" or "opening soon".  This is the only one I found that remains, and it's in a gallery that I believe isn't going to be able to reopen due to damage.  It was right on the water.

wilmington, vt. december 2011.

A sign at the other end of the same building.  "Kindness is like snow - it beautifies everything it covers."  There's a lot of positivity and love in this town.

"kindness is like snow - it beautifies everything it covers."

We first visited Wilmington in April, when it was an untouched, quaint, vibrant little town. We moved here a week after the town had been gutted by a hurricane.  Now, only three months later, so many people are back on their feet.  Standing there today, I couldn't help but wonder - if my little jewelry shop, carpet shop, or bookstore was totally ruined in a flood, would I have the positivity and energy to pick up and get back on my feet this quickly?  I don't know that I would have been able to not fall victim to a "why me?" attitude; I don't know that I would have been able to smile and figure it all out and be back on my feet in what really is no time at all.

2011 has been an incredible year.  Our journey over the course of a year has been more varied and ever-changing than any other year I can think of in my life.  A year ago, we were immersed in our jobs and our life in Brooklyn.  Last spring we said, "Hey, what if we move out of the city?" which became "Hey, wanna go check out Vermont?" which became "I really liked that area, somewhere between Bennington and Brattleboro..." and then just like that, it was "We found a place in Wilmington... we're moving there in the fall." It all felt kind of like we were throwing a dart into a dark room, hoping it would stick and that if it did, we'd be alright.  As much as we were following our hearts and our instincts, it truly was all a gamble, and there were moments - especially as I was driving away from Brooklyn with a car full of stuff - where I really thought "What are we doing? Are we going to be okay?"

That it was this place as opposed to the million other places in the US (or even the northeast) that we could ended up in after having uttered the phrase "Hey, what if move out of the city?", and that we ended up here specifically when we did, I can't help but feel sentimental about the fact that we were drawn here.  Here, a place that - when I really think about it - is a town-sized representation of one of the most important lessons I've learned in 2011.

In many, many ways this year has taught me that things will not always feel like they have a certain path.  That sometimes things will feel so uncertain that it'll scare the hell out of you.  Maybe things are feeling up in the air because in a terrible storm, yours was the shop that got flooded.  Or maybe you're feeling overwhelmed because you've just moved 300 miles away to a town you don't know on what was for all intents and purposes a whim.  Maybe you just switched jobs.  Maybe the structure of your family has changed through birth, death, divorce, marriage, or even distance.  We're constantly faced with changes big and small.  Life, it would seem, is a series of adjustments and evolutions - some invited, some not - all, at times, overwhelming.

And whether you invited the change or it snuck up on you, it births around you a new reality - a reality that you're submerged in full time, like it or not.  There's inevitably a fleeting moment right when the change happens where you feel like you have to stop - where you say, "I can't do this!" - a moment where you're ready to give up.  But even if you really believe that you "can't do this," chances are, you're going to choose to pick up and keep on going, no matter how hard it is,  usually because you frankly don't have a choice.  And then the only thing there is to do is to let yourself adjust to your new reality.  There'll likely be growing pains in the process.  You'll feel tired, and you'll probably find yourself missing the way things were from time to time.  It sure would be easier to never have to adjust.

But in the end, as long as you followed and keep following your instincts, that new reality that the change birthed will eventually become the familiar.  All of a sudden, in the midst of it all, you'll realize you're comfortable.  What once was new and scary is now just life.  Adjustments happened without you realizing it; you stretched, you grew, you became different.   "Who knew," you'll find yourself saying, "this is where we'd end up."  Standing in your same old shop, now polished and ready. Or finding yourself deep in work at a job that used to be unfamiliar.  Sitting around a kitchen table enjoying the company of family members who you didn't even know just a couple of years ago, who are now dependable presences in your life.  Or, driving, through a town that until recently you didn't even know existed.  A town that is now "home" and that's giving you a lot of food for thought.  Wilmington, where amazing happens.