The Frost of Legend Lengthens

Shaftsbury, Vermont

The Vermont mountains stretch

extended straight, save for dark

scowling Glastenbury local

Indians say is cursed,

whose shadow of pent-up lore

crawls up Buck Hill Road fall mornings

leaving the bright air cold

with the memory of the missing.

Middie Rivers, lost like a lone

actor on a gloomy stage,

swallowed whole in a flash by

the forest he knew best,

knew too well for any earthly

use the line where man leaves off

and nature starts, and never

over-stepped it save in dreams.

Paula Weldon in her red

sweater, wondering what

to face or run away from,

wandered into oblivion,

deep in woods ten miles

from a railroad station, as if to put

forever out of mind the hope

of being, as we say, received.

Little Paul Jepson, tired of waiting,

set out for the nearest boundary

to escape across, abandoning the car.

His mother’s cries fell unheeded

everywhere they looked in the

place that is silent all day long.

Where had he been and

what had he been doing?

Frieda Langer, on the shore

of Somerset Reservoir,

a weekend explorer of the deep,

returned to camp for a change

of clothes to change places

with the Glastenbury ghosts.

Oh it was terrible as well could be!

Unlike the others she was found

months later, her bones

surfacing in protest, a voice

for all the anonymous who

have turned over in our graves.

The frost of legend lengthens

through these personal silences,

disappearing by mid-day but

returning in the eerie dawn.

Now they tell us don’t wear red

when walking in these woods.

I know wherever I am, I shall not

lack pain to keep me awake.

NOTES:

1. “Shaftesbury is located in the heart of the region known as The Shires of Vermont. It is one of the very first towns chartered in Vermont and is known today for its bucolic views and peaceful nature.” (https://shaftsburyvt.gov/come-to-shaftsbury/discover-shaftsbury/).

2. The story of nearby Glastenbury Mountain is rich with legend. The mountain boasts its own ghost town also named Glastenbury, destroyed by a flood in the late 1898 due to erosion by cleared trees for charcoal production. The local Indians avoided hunting on the mountain due to what they saw as a dark presence. Between 1945-1950 4 people mysteriously disappeared around this mountain:

November 12, 1945: 74-year-old mountain guide and hunter Middie Rivers right after 4PM, walking slightly ahead of a group of other people.

December 1, 1946: 18-year-old Paula Weldon, sophomore at Bennington College, wearing a red sweater, disappeared after walking toward the mountain. This incident resulted in a massive manhunt and included the first ever search and rescue operation by a helicopter. It also led to the formation of the Vermont State Police.

October 12, 1950: 8-year-old Paul Jepson, accompanying mother while she was feeding pigs at a local farm, left the car in which he was waiting and wandered off into the woods never to be seen again. Dogs tracked him for a few miles and lost his trail.

October 28, 1950: 53-year-old Freida Langer, disappeared while camping near the Somerset Reservoir (on the eastside of the mountain). Her remains were found a year later by hunters.

3. The famous American poet Robert Frost bought a Dutch colonial stone house built in 1769 in South Shaftsbury and moved his family there with plans to be an apple farmer, after leaving a teaching post at Amherst College. He found it easier to write when he was farming, according to Frost biographer Jay Parini. He and his family lived there for nine years, with Frost winning the first of his four Pulitzers during that time, the collection entitled New Hampshire.

"I have moved a good part of the way to a stone cottage on a hill at South Shaftsbury in southern Vermont on the New York side near the historic town of Bennington where if I have any money left after repairing the roof in the spring I mean to plant a new Garden of Eden with a thousand apple trees of some unforbidden variety," wrote Frost in a letter to a friend on Oct. 23, 1920, according to Parini's book, Robert Frost: A Life. (from https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/05/21/robert-frost-museum-vermont)

4. All the italicized lines in this poem are direct extractions from Frost’s poem New Hampshire from the Pulitzer-winning collection New Hampshire that he wrote while living in the Shaftsbury house:

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight (l.215)
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage (l.46)
He knew too well for any earthly use the line where man leaves off and nature starts, and never over-stepped it save in dreams (l.379-381)
Rather what to face or run away from (l.397)
Deep in woods ten miles from a railroad station, as if to put forever out of mind the hope of being, as we say,
received (l.40-43).
The nearest boundary to escape across (l.255)
The place is silent all day long (l.191)
Where had he been and what had he been doing? (l.56)
Oh it was terrible as well could be (l.60)
An explorer of the deep (l.93)
Turned over in our graves (l.62).
I know wherever I am, I shall not lack pain to keep me awake (l.241-243)