Mt Hobart rises behind our home as seen here from the frozen surface of the pond across the trail from us. The pond does not have any name that we know of, when we lived in the red trailer on Rt 12 and used to hike up here to our special spot I called it Wally’s Pond and told Gaelen and Ambiana ( and eventually Jakobi) that it was where the Red Sox mascot Wally the Green Monster spent the off-season but that name hasn’t stuck. We mostly call it our pond.
I love to paddle on the pond but I love to walk on it’s frozen surface even more. Once it freezes I am on it at least 4x a week. Last week we skated on it and this week I put on my skis and skied a loop adding figure 8’s and track interchanges, it was like laying out and then skiing on railroad tracks and I spent about an hour happily cruising around. On the trail or in the woods skiing is so-so for me and I have never really taken to it though I do like being outdoors and in the woods so I do it but on the pond I found my flow. I could cruise on frozen rivers, over vast lakes, across glaciers, out on our pond I am skiing to the north pole one week and to the south the next. Open ice that is the terrain for me on skis
The Nutcracker
On Saturday and Sunday Ambiana performed in Ballet Wolcott’s Nutcracker Ballett. Ambiana grew up dancing with Ballett Wolcott and this year moved to Moving Light in Montpelier along with Erika, Eliana and Sophie all fellow BW dancers. They drained BW of older teen dancers and thus returned to perform in the Nutcracker. It was nice to be among Helene and Brandi and to see all the new young dancers thay are now in the company and to see the older ones come into their roles as the senior company.
The ballet was at the Highland Center for the Arts which is a multi million dollar performance space, gallery and cafe 10 milesnorth of Hardwick in the Northeast Kingdom. On the shores of Lake Caspian it gets lots of wealthy summer residents and one of these thought it nice to provide the area with a spectacular performing arts center.
