For as long as I can remember I have been coming up to Quichee, Vermont. It is a small skiing village in Vermont because calling it a town would be giving it too much credit. The main attraction of Quichee among other things is a gorge, a huge pit that falls around a hundred feet into the ground and has a stream lazily flowing at its base. This what people come here to see. So fortunately we don't get that many tourists. Summers spent in Quichee consisted of going to the only diner in town for breakfast, swimming in either creeks or actual pools at the Quichee Club, making your way over to the Simon and Pierce store where you get to see glass blown and all their products being made. You could sift through sand and find all sorts of treasures at the store right by the gorge, go for a hike in one of their many trails or spend an eternity looking at all the interesting trinkets and collectibles at the antiques store (funny enough everything has stayed in the same place for about 15 years, so I don't know if it is an antique store or someplace to store old things people no longer want).
Then if we were feeling particularly adventurous we would go into one of the neighboring towns/ villages that are nearby. We always made the obligatory trip to Hanover to see all fourteen stores they have in town, go to the Dirt Cowboy Cafe, maybe see a movie, definitely have a meal at Molly's and walk all around the Dartmouth campus. We usually made our way over to Woodstock, White River Junction and Lebanon. Then if were feeling is feeling particularly energetic we would making the hour long pilgrimage north to the Ben & Jerry's Factory in Waterbury, VT where we would get free samples and see how ice cream is made again, just in case we forgot about it from all the previous years.
These memories are some of the fondest that I have. I have poked a little fun at Vermont and Quichee, but it is an amazing place that I honestly would change a thing about. It is a quiet, slower, and more simpler way of life. Now just to clarify I don't mean backwoods, illiterate, not splitting the famliy tree simpler. I mean simpler as removing all the unnecessary burdens and trappings of our ever evolving cluttered and fast paced lives. No one ever really speeds because there is really nowhere anyone needs to go to in a hurry. There are a significant lack of tourists which makes it feel like a true vacation, where everyone there is already relaxed and unwound. There are institutions that have been there not only the entirety of my lifetime, but for most of my fathers lifetime as well. It is a time capsule that has been preserved for decades, unencumbered, unburdened and unchanged which is exactly the way it should stay. Going to Quichee is like Christmas morning, it is something sacred you have been doing your entire life, it has tons of trees and sweets, and you always build it up and get excited for it and it always lives up to the hype.
