24 | October | 2014

We began today travelling through Poland, Russia, Greenwich and Cambridge without leaving New York State. When it wasn’t raining, the clouds deepened the landscape colours.

It may have been just a brief sojourn into Vermont and the historic town of Bennington, but there were finds to be made.

The Robert Frost Stone House Museum is the house where Frost wrote this poem (via poetryfoundation.org). Once more, the weather added extra atmospherics to the evocative landscape surrounding the house.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Source: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (Library of America, 1995)

As well as the three covered bridges in Bennington, we (and some of those welcome bus loads of people) also visited The Apple Barn to try their apple cider donuts, apple dumpling and ….. apples.

On to Williamstown, Massachusetts where The Clark Art Institute houses an extensive collection of impressionist art including paintings by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. Here are two works by Degas (Entrance of the Masked Dancers and Little Dancer Aged Fourteen). Camille Pissarro’s Apples resonated for some reason.