The other day, my friend Adam called from Los Angeles with the news that the Lincoln Gap -- a gap for which I have an almost proprietary and unhealthy affection, and as a resident of Lincoln for more than two decades now I tend to call mine -- had a cameo in the March issue of Bicycling Magazine. Better still, the gap was featured in an article about local and, in some cases, legendary climbs.

"Pedal if you can!" the summary of the Lincoln Gap begins. "When you think you're near the top, you round a corner and see the road rocket up into the trees, which is where people typically begin walking."

I know that spot well. The first time I tried conquering the gap on a bike was in 2002, and even though I had stopped and rested at least twice, I was pedaling so slowly as I approached the summit that I was passed by a half-dozen other cyclists. I was so disheartened that I climbed off my bike and walked.

Since then I have gotten more proficient, and in the late spring and summer I bike up the gap two or three times a week. Twice I have biked up there early enough in the year that there was still snow on the road at the top, where the plows have common sense not to go, and deep patches in the bordering woods.

Now, I don't mention my ability to bike to the top as mere bravado -- though certainly there is some bluster in that statement. But given how often in this space I describe my profound ineptitude in so many ways (Can you say chimney fire?) it doesn't seem especially vain to admit that, if nothing else, I am capable of biking up a big hill.

According to the magazine, the Lincoln Gap averages an 18 percent grade.

What Bicycling doesn't focus on, however, is how spectacularly beautiful the gap is. (The magazine also, alas, doesn't answer that age-old question about why we call them gaps in Vermont, while our neighbors in New Hampshire refer to them as notches.) It's about eight and one half miles from Vermont 116 to the top of the Lincoln Gap. I don't know the precise distance to the peak from Vermont 100 on the Warren side, but it's not quite as far.

And whether you are approaching the summit from the east side of the mountain or the west, the ride (or drive) is stunning. From the east, the road is meandering and pastoral until you start your climb, and the sun makes the small fields and grazing pastures there luminescent in June. From the west, the road parallels the New Haven River, and the landmarks include Bartlett's Falls, one of the very best swimming holes in Vermont. It starts its serious uphill climb just beyond the old Goodyear farm, about three miles beyond the village of Lincoln.

The western side also has a lookout just under a half mile from the top, and the view of Addison County stretches all the way to Lake Champlain. It offers one of my very favorite views in Vermont: A snapshot of the idyllic world we fear sometimes has been lost. There they are: The farmhouses, the fields and the dirt roads that wind toward the sugarhouses at the edge of the woods. And, of course, the woods themselves.

Some people argue it is harder to manage the paved switchbacks on the east side of the gap, but the combination of dirt and asphalt make the west side no picnic either.

It is also worth noting that because the Lincoln Gap is indeed impassable five or six months of the year, we never grow blind to its pleasures. Annually, in the spring, we rediscover it. The route over the mountain returns, along with crocuses and daffodils and those small mounds of road salt we rake from our yards.

There are myriad reasons why I live where I live: Not just Vermont, but Lincoln. And the opportunity to savor the spectacle of the Lincoln Gap is high among them.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 1, 2007.)

One year when I was a little boy, the Easter Bunny left a basket for me in the dryer in our house's basement. Another year my basket was left dangling from a branch high enough in the willow tree in our back yard that it seemed likely the Easter Bunny had encountered the same space alien who had turned heiress Nancy Archer into a woman 50 feet tall in the fittingly titled, 1958 science-fiction classic, "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman."

Year after year, it seemed, the Easter Bunny would find ingenuous places to leave my brother's and my baskets, always sending us off on lengthy trails of clues that would begin just outside our bedroom doors. The clues, before I could read, were small pictures drawn in pencil: A stove. A couch. Something that looked a lot like a spider, but turned out to be the willow tree in our yard when drawn by a rabbit that lacked opposable thumbs.

Meanwhile, some of my other friends had Easter egg hunts. Or they had baskets waiting for them in their kitchens or living rooms.

In this regard, the Easter Bunny was far more like the Tooth Fairy than Santa Claus. Santa Claus seemed to offer pretty much the same drill to every house on the block: On Christmas Eve, after everyone was asleep, he would deposit presents by the family's Christmas tree. There wasn't, it seemed, a lot of room for improvisation.

But the Easter Bunny, just like the Tooth Fairy, seemed to have different traditions at different houses. Why did the Tooth Fairy leave some kids a dime for every tooth, while other kids got a quarter? Why did some kids get a trinket instead of a coin? Moreover, no two parents had quite the same explanation for what the Tooth Fairy did with all those teeth that mysteriously disappeared in the night. The most interesting response? A friend of my daughter's told her that her parents said the Tooth Fairy used their teeth as roofing tiles.

Certainly there was a commonality to the baskets: Chocolate and jelly beans were going to be lying amidst the artificial grass. And, yes, the Easter Bunny was going to reveal a certain amount of uncharacteristic self-absorption by leaving us chocolate bunnies we would joyfully consume. (Which, just for the record, brings me to artist Cosimo Cavallaro's completely naked, anatomically correct, 6-foot tall statue of Jesus Christ on the cross made entirely of chocolate. The artwork, titled "My Sweet Lord," had to be hidden away this past week soon after it was unveiled in Manhattan because so many people were offended. I was disappointed because I hate to see artwork censored. But I also can't imagine that anyone who has endured the pain of crucifixion, whether he is a petty criminal or humankind's savior, would want to be reduced to a bad pun. In addition, I hate to see food wasted -- especially chocolate.)

In any case, the Easter Bunny seemed to approach us all in a fashion that was unique to our families.

And perhaps that is the beauty of the tradition, and one of the reasons why I love the holiday. The hare can ad-lib, which is a vitally important talent if your holiday occurs in the very first weeks of spring. To wit: Santa knows, more or less, what to expect in terms of weather. It's December. He knows how to dress. But the Easter Bunny? Well, this year there was snow in Vermont only days after the crocuses had started to bloom in my yard and it had been warm enough to resume biking. Some Easters it's 60 degrees here in Lincoln. Other years there have been blizzards.

As a result, Easter is a holiday in which the unexpected is always a part of the ritual. You hunt, you find, you open. You're surprised.

There are a lot of reasons why I'm a Christian, but certainly the wonder and reassurance that come with Easter morning are a big part of it.

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 8, 2007.)

Aaron Gratton is batting leadoff today, and he hammers the very first pitch deep to right field, an opposite field blast that has triple written all over it. It's clear the moment he leaves the batter's box, however, that he has no intention of stopping at third. He wants an inside the park home run, and he will get it unless the throw from the cutoff man to Justin Bouvier at home plate is nearly perfect. It is: Not quite perfect, but it's just close enough. It's a hair up the first base line, and Bouvier is able to snag the ball and dive at Gratton a split second before the young man dives headfirst into home.

So begins another afternoon of baseball in the swimming pool at Mount Abraham Union High School. The bat is a Whiffle ball bat and the orb is a great silver beach ball. And the players are students in the school's special education department, wonderful teenagers who happen to have autism or Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities.

After he's called out, Gratton, 14, smiles at his hubris and pounds the water with his hand good-naturedly, a little frustrated, and then shakes the water from his brown curls. Gratton has a pervasive developmental disorder.

Bouvier, 25, is a St. Michael's trained water-safety instructor in the school's special education program. He is a husky man with a boyish smile and a spectacular tenor voice. Along with lifeguard and teacher April Orvis, 34, and other school-based clinicians, he dives into the pool with these kids every other day.

This afternoon there are eight students, which means the baseball diamond they have constructed in the shallow end of the pool has just enough fielders. Among the highlights of today's contest? Ian Freeman, a charismatic 18-year-old with Down syndrome, bangs out a hit that is reminiscent of a single off Fenway Park's Green Monster: It is a line shot to left that might have been a home run if it had landed a finger-width higher, but instead ricochets off the very top of the ladder into the pool, all the way back to where Bouvier is standing in the center of the diamond. Samantha Dunbar, 13, makes a peg to first base that would have made Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter proud. And Stephanie Freegard, 14, who is capable of swimming to the bottom of even the deepest section of the pool, makes an unassisted double play when she handles a grounder -- well, a skipper, if I am going to be precise -- flawlessly with a runner on first.

And they accomplish all of this in 3 and 4 feet of water.

"I just love watching their triumphs," Bouvier says. "I want them to feel success. Sometimes it's something that seems very small: Learning how to hold a bat properly. And sometimes it's much bigger. Ian was petrified of the water in seventh grade. Now? He swims laps." (Indeed, as part of his pre-game warm-up the day I was there, Freeman was doing the butterfly stroke across the pool.)

Bouvier and Orvis approach their work with an enthusiasm that is infectious. Clearly they are having massive amounts of fun with their students. "Once we had mastered water polo -- and the demand of throwing the ball in the right direction -- we thought, why not up the ante to baseball?" Bouvier recalls.

Pat Mattison, a consulting teacher in the school's special education department, sees particular benefits to the students' afternoons in the aquatic ballpark: "The water makes these kids feel so capable. In the pool, their needs are being met, and they're accomplishing far more than we can measure on a standard test. Yes, it's a phys-ed class, but it's one where they're capable of doing the same activities as their peers."

In other words, water becomes the great equalizer.

In this case, however, it is also great fun.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 15, 2007.)

Sometimes there is genius among us, and we are blind. There is talent that is not merely life-affirming, it is life-changing. The other day I caught a glimpse of such awesome brilliance: I saw 5-year-old Nathan Viera of Lincoln burp the entire alphabet.

Yup, all 26 letters -- or, because "W" is a three-syllable letter, 28 consecutive burps.

Moreover, he does this with burps that are deep and resonant and clear: Bullfrog burps, in which a "P" is as distinct and recognizable as an "M." The boy is the Broadway belter of burps.

Now, I don't know Nathan well. About all I know is that he is a terrific young person who colors very well, and happens to be much better behaved in church than I ever was at his age. He patiently colors in his pew with his brother. Me? I would scream out inappropriate things. To wit: One Sunday morning when everyone else had their heads bowed in prayer, I made my presence known by standing up in the pew and shouting, "Sugar Pops are tops!"

The irony, in hindsight, is that I never liked Sugar Pops. It would have made much more sense to have pretended I was Tony the Tiger, the advertising spokesfeline for Frosted Flakes, and blurted out, "They're grrrreat!"

In all fairness, I also screamed out embarrassing things in other locales, too. I was 8 years old when my parents took me to the movie, "Goodbye, Columbus." There is a lengthy and pivotal scene in the film about birth control and a diaphragm. I knew nothing about either subject at 8, and when my parents wouldn't respond to my whispered entreaties about diaphragms, I finally yelled in the theater at the top of my lungs, "What's a diaphragm?"

Now, why were my parents taking me to "Goodbye, Columbus" when I was in the third grade? Oh, I'm just guessing, but "A Clockwork Orange" was probably sold out.

In any case, my family and Nathan's sit near each other in church on Sunday mornings, and I have always been mightily impressed with the lad's understated dignity and reserve. He often wears a necktie to church, which is more than I do.

Consequently, I was completely unprepared one Sunday morning when the youth pastor, Todd Goodyear, had about a dozen kids from the congregation gathered around him at the front of the church for his weekly children's moment, and Nathan for the first time strutted his stuff. The moment was especially powerful because Nathan is modest and unassuming. He certainly hadn't planned on amazing an audience that day by burping the alphabet.

Goodyear, however, was asking the kids if they knew firsthand any Ripley's "Believe It or Not" stories, when Nathan's older sister, Kyla -- a charismatic 10-year-old with an impeccable sense of fashion and a dress for any occasion -- raised her hand and told Goodyear that (Believe it or not!) Nathan could burp the alphabet. Whole thing, all 26 letters. Goodyear calmly unpinned the small microphone from his shirt and turned it over to Nathan. And, Nathan, without a trace of nervousness, burped his ABCs with the panache of a pop star. Simon Cowell would have applauded. Paula Abdul would have tried to adopt him.

Now, this isn't the first time I have been dazzled by a vocal performance by one of my neighbors. It wasn't all that long ago that Griff the Wonder Dog howled the theme song to NPR's "Morning Edition" in a local variety show and left my wife and me hyperventilating we were laughing so hard.

But it's rare that I have seen a talent come out of nowhere like this and electrify an audience. The church burst into applause. Consequently, you heard it here first: It's only a matter of time before burping really catches fire, and "American Idol" replaces Country Night with Burping Night, and -- one always can dream -- we hear Beyonce and Justin and Fergie burping, too.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 22, 2007.)

The other day I was visiting the Lincoln Community School, the town's elementary school, and I did something I haven't done in a very long time. I helped a little boy who was trapped in his snowsuit like the Michelin Man -- just imagine that character made of tires trying to move -- climb into his snow boots and get his snow pants fastened around his ankles.

Forget for a moment the disturbing reality that this was a morning well into the second third of April and there was still so much snow left on the ground that the children actually had need of their snowsuits. Focus instead on your own memories of the times this winter when you helped your own children and grandchildren climb into their snowsuits or the times in winters past when you did.

It has been a very long time since my daughter needed help climbing into a snowsuit. Moreover, since she is now a 13-year-old who will always sacrifice comfort for fashion, there has to be a raging blizzard outside before she will wear anything to school on her feet other than sneakers or (if it is merely sleeting, hailing or the air is filled with flying locusts) ballet flats without socks.

But that morning at the school I was surprised by what an oddly satisfying experience it is to help a child get ready for snow. Oh, it might be one of those routines that morphs quickly from ritual to chore. The fact that I had forgotten how nurturing the moment is might be an indication that once you have wedged a small foot into a small boot for the 10th time in a week, the thrill disappears and you are left only with the smell of a sweaty sock.

Still, my daughter has been out of elementary school for nearly two years now, and my return to her old school left me feeling both wistful and old. Elementary schools are pretty magical little worlds -- and little is the correct word, especially when you are a grownup sitting in one of those miniature chairs that press your knees into your chest. But they are indeed fantastical, in part because the kids haven't yet figured out that we adults really are making it up as we go along and most of our answers are ad-libbed. Moreover, almost everything about the world is new and unexpected, and anything is still possible.

To wit: When I was there, the art teacher, Nancy McClaran, was pinning to a wall one class' interpretations of the Mona Lisa, and it was evident that few of the kids were trying to replicate Da Vinci: Instead they were stretching and rounding and interpreting the painting in the phantasmagoric ways that kids will who haven't yet begun to feel any pressure from parents and peers to color only within the lines, (or, perhaps, to shade only within the ovals of a standardized test). On another wall were the color photos from the school's recent production of Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors." The play was mounted by the combined fifth- and sixth-grade classes, and the photos of the kids in their costumes conveyed both the actors' incredible earnestness and the simple joy that children -- especially girls -- get from playing dress-up.

And, of course, there was the tremendous enthusiasm for building an Abenaki village out of clay, or donning a backpack and wandering into the woods with teacher Anna Howell, or writing a short story in which you can be completely oblivious to cause and effect and the laws of the universe because you happen to be only 7 years old.

Sometimes I worry that children grow up too fast. And then I realize this: It's not merely the children's youth that I mourn. It's mine.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 29, 2007.)