Mount Philo State Park

How to get there: Take Route 7 north toward Burlington. About halfway between Ferrisburgh and the Charlotte blinking light, turn right (east) onto State Park Road, which goes straight to the park entrance and parking area. The trailhead is quite obvious as you walk in on the main road.

Mount Philo, it seems, has undergone some renovations. Almost exactly two years ago, in January 1998, western Vermont and surrounding areas experienced the fiercest ice storm of recent history; Montreal, Burlington and the hundreds of small towns in-between declared a state of emergency as trees, bushes, pine needles, fall's residual leaves--each branch and scratch of every shrub--bore a new and unshakable layer of ice. Mount Philo lost countless trees; some split down the middle from the weight of heavy ice on their branches, and others eventually needed to be logged because they had experienced excessive damage during the storm. Even today, large branches and trunks are scattered on the mountain's side, cris-crossed between the remaining pines like toothpicks glued to a sleeping porcupine. Along with the clearing away of fallen branches came the clearing of a road, made for cars, which follows a short series of switchbacks up the mountain to its top. Formerly a horse and carriage trail, this road has made Mt. Philo accessible by sport utility vehicle, snowmobile in the winter, or a Geo Metro in normal driving conditions.

When we hiked the mountain today, we did not hike up the road, nor did we drive up it; we marched straight up the steep and icy trail between the wiry wheat and gray colored pines, stepping periodically over a few of the fallen ones. We labored upwards at, what seemed to me, a rather determined pace for such a short hike (it took us about 20-25 minutes to summit). One after another, our feet found little holes in the narrow trail; what was once moldable mud had frozen into useful brown and dirty white footholds. Mud and old leaves, having solidified, became climbable.

Halfway up the steep and uneven trail, our path was intersected by this newly paved road. The break in the ascent gave us a chance to stop, catch our breath, look right, look left, and find the continuation of our trail up Mt. Philo about 15 feet down the road. After another 10-15 minutes of stepping, breathing, and wondering whether or not we really needed to wear the thermals, we arrived at what seemed to be the top, and stopped there. And looked out.

We had summited onto a concrete slab with a green metal railing, and the view was indeed worthwhile. The Adirondack and Green Mountains spill into the lower Champlain valley; Lake Champlain rests, having settled in its folds, like a Siamese cat sleeping between lumpy covers. The landscape resembled a patchwork quilt with its farms, barns, fields and the roads that weave between them--these roads that only became such after have been traveled over time, connecting one place to another, again and again, linking one part of life in this valley to the next. Above us hovered a clouded sky; it did not promise rain or snow, but only a particular shelter.
Distant mountains seemed still, like a dried watercolor, and were only visible by their outline. Their bodies were distinguishable only as a different shade of the gray that composed the majority of the landscape: they were darker than that of the lake, lighter than that of the sky. It was these distant mountains (the Adirondacks, from this west-facing view) that guided my vision southward; and as I turned my head around me, I became aware of the size of the summit on which I stood. I stepped off the concrete landing and scampered up a bit further onto an acre-large summit, standing at about 980 feet--nowhere near tree-line, but still sparsely populated with trees. They stuck up between a couple of small picnic pavilions, utility houses and sheds, from behind one of which emerged a man wearing a Columbia jacket and gray hair, walking his dog.

His name was Jim, and he wanted vistas. "People want it, you know?" he said. "They want to climb up a mountain, sweat a little maybe, reach the top and look around to say 'Here I am, see? Look at this.'" He pointed to the clearing at our right, where trees along the side of the summit opened up to reveal a picnic bench perched on the edge. His hand lingered in mid-air; he was pointing out the undeniably splendid view of the Green Mountains. "I think," he continued, "that the state should keep up these places a little more--clear out a few trees, so there are more vistas and views."

Jim, a photographer by trade, recalled for me that he had worked a wedding on the top of Mt. Philo last summer. "They had the ceremony over there," he said, pointing at the concrete landing on which I had first summited, "and the reception was right over there." He tugged at his dog's leash and nodded at the picnic pavilion. "Every guest had a handful of red rose petals, and when she said 'I do,' up they were thrown into the wind. They looked like summer snowflakes," he said.

I explained to Jim that I myself am a native of Utah, and so I understand to a certain degree the satisfaction one can get from an open view at the top of a mountain. He nodded. "It is my belief," he continued, "that the Vermont tourist bureau should see about establishing more clearings--so that they could send out more pictures of views like this in brochures."

And maybe they should, I thought--as it occurred to me that this ascent marked my first 360° mountaintop view of or in Vermont. From the clearing on top of Mt. Philo, I could finally see the full layout of the land in which I had lived for over two years, even though I had been hiking local trails in the Champlain Valley a number of times. Middlebury, my home, was clearly visible to the south (I looked South); Burlington was behind me (I turned 180° to face North); New York State was on the western horizon, beyond the lake (West); and the house of Molly's family (my roommate since freshman year) lay over in Norwich, almost due east (I turned East).
And for every view, there was at least one picnic bench and grille; and for every picnic bench and grille there was a space in the new (since the ice storm in '98) parking lot at the center of the summit. That wasn't all--on the southeast corner of that lot, you might be relieved to find a soda machine in case you forgot your own beverages. As well as a basketball hoop on the west end of the lot, in case you needed something to do. A basketball hoop, a brown chalet, a grille, a lake, a concrete lookout, a parking space, a mountain, 15 more parking spaces, a wedding, a soda machine, a vista, a view.

If my understanding, up until that moment, of the way the world works was based upon the assumption that only a grueling ascent--a crawling up and out of your daily, earth-bound life--could be rewarded with an amazing view, my assumption seems to have been incorrect. The question became, then: is a view's worth dependent upon how hard you've worked to reached it?--or might an amazing view be arranged for you with virtually no effort on your part?

We soon started making our way down the trail, betting on who would slip first, until we reached a fork. The trail down would lead us back directly to the van; taking a sharp turn back up another narrow trail would take us over to "Devil's Chair." We angled back up. Devil's Chair was a 40-foot nest of jagged rocks, perched on their side and secured into the belly of the mountain. We bent and tilted ourselves into the mini-boulders that acted as the chair within the nest; we were guarded above and below by the nest's stark, stacked shelves; ice had molded itself above and around us along the deep gray and moss- covered stone. The ice fell smooth in some places and fell down to a point in others.
Above us, on the rim of Devil's Chair, we could see a jagged scratchy hawk's nest. I envisioned the hawk tracing through the sky--the entire world around him as his vista, every inch of land and branch available to make his nest--and choosing this place to call his own. Sitting in our own chair, a few trees along the mountainside barely shading us from the outside world, we now had a slightly closer view of the patchwork land and the minivan below. As people, with the entire world open to us, we too had chosen this place to rest.

Physically, at that moment, I felt as near to the ground and the van from which we had come as I had an hour earlier, when I first climbed out of it. Physically, I felt as close to the farms and barns of the patchwork land as I had before I could ever see them--when I hovered low amongst them. But as I was nested in that shallow, soft hollow of the mountain, looking down through scraggly pines upon the landscape in which I lived, I understood that perhaps Mt. Philo had never demanded my grueling ascent--or set forth to lift me out of or above anything. It only reminded me of where I had landed--where I had ultimately chosen to be--and held me there for a time.

text by Caroline Bodkin
photography by Ben Jervey