The ads for “Back to School” items have been appearing in flyers for most of August. They bring back memories that are happy ones for me. Back in the 1950s every neighborhood in Rutland had a public school close by. I would have attended parochial school at Christ the King but they didn’t have a…

Today’s run was wet. Really wet. I went on vacation recently and took about seven days off from training, so am really not feeling anything about a Spartan race, but part of me wants to see what I can do starting from basically nothing. Realistically though, I am not starting from nothing, I am starting…

By Joe Rankin You can pretty much count on a tree to stay in one place, at least in the real world. Not so in fiction. Remember the walking, talking Ents in the Lord of the Rings movies? Or Groot, the tree-like alien in the science fiction film “Guardians of the Galaxy?” Roots anchor a…

In August, the musician Frank Ocean self-distributed a 366-page zine called “Boys Don’t Cry.” Alongside photography and poetry, the zine (an album release tie-in) made room for an unannotated list of Frank Ocean’s 100 favorite movies—although it wasn’t numbered, so the only way you would know that he’d aimed for a round sum was if…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Leo Moon, on the heels of a Mercury/Venus/Jupiter conjunction at the 28th Degree of Virgo. This is a totally beneficent trinity that will mean different things to different people. On the surface it has the potential…

By Rev. Lee Alison Crawford In the end, gravity always wins. For about 60 years, the barn that Oren Bates built has been a fixture on the Mission Farm property. One notices it even as one barrels by at 50 m.p.h. over on Route 4. A quick glance across the fields and river is all…

By Laurie Morrissey Birdsong has always fascinated humans. Besides waking some of us up a wee bit too early in the morning, it has inspired musical compositions and immortal poetry. It has produced lush descriptions, like those of the early 1900s field guide author F. Schuyler Mathews, who wrote of the wood thrush’s song: “It…

People in their late 20s and early 30s are able to determine which of their peers are attempting to become “real adults” by checking for an array of telltale signs: a marriage, a mortgage, a Costco membership, a firm support for the pragmatic politics of Hillary Clinton. For the past decade, there has perhaps been…

By Brady Crain Last week on one of my hikes, I got neck deep in some poison parsnip. I don’t believe that I am particularly allergic to this plant, because the only places it broke out was on my legs, which were covered with fresh bleeding scratches from scrabbling through raspberry and blackberry, not to…

Mountain Meditation By Marguerite Jill Dye Mom always said, “Vermont is heaven on earth,” and I feel as if I’m between heaven and earth in Vermont. I was pulling wilted wave petunias off flower box bouquets when a red-spotted purple butterfly fluttered my way, dancing around me with jet black wings with intricate blue designs…

By Dom Cioffi In the ensuing weeks since my unexpected cancer diagnosis, I have been adrift in interesting emotions. The first emotion I experienced was shock, which, in hindsight, is a natural and expected response. I don’t think anyone who is told they have cancer cuddles up to television afterwards to watch a ballgame. The…

By Cal Garrison, a.ka. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Void-of-Course, Aries Moon, just as the sun leaves Leo and enters the sign of the Virgin. As I sit down to dream up yet another batch of astrological musings, it occurs to me that half the…

Cal Garrison Mother of the Skye weekly HoroscopesCal Garrison (a.k.a Mother of the Skye) writes weekly horoscopes for The Mountain Times. If you would like an emailed notification sent to you weekly, sign up for the newsletter, below. Want to hear more from Mother of the Skye? Check out Mother's Celestial Inspirations for a deeper…

It’s funny what happens when you run on autopilot. More on that later, though. A couple of weeks ago I was out riding my road bike, and my ride took a bit longer than I had hoped (my plan was to go up Killington Road, down to Route 4, up to the pass, and back,…

By Mary Ellen Shaw Many of us learned some type of hobby from our parents. Perhaps we didn’t appreciate what we were taught at the time. But with age comes wisdom! My mother loved to crochet and do embroidery, along with a little knitting. All of these hobbies take patience and practice. I never caught…