After more than three hours of wandering the Shelburne Museum, my feet were tired and my mind was buzzing with everything I’d seen. Though I wished I had the stamina to return for a second day, I pressed on toward Burlington, Vermont. I soon came across the Magic Hat brewery, and even though I think their beers are mediocre—and a six pack of their Oktoberfest I bought before my trip was the first beer I’ve every purchased that was skunked—I couldn’t resist a tour.

Once inside I was immediately overwhelmed by what felt like very forced “arty” kitch. The tasting bar area was decorated in neon and graffiti and steampunk mechanical madness. There were a bunch of frat boys standing around, and I had to fight my way through them to be noticed. I zeroed in on the only female bartender, who was very nice as she poured my samples. As I was drinking a boy, a economics student from the University of Vermont, took it upon himself to educate me about beer. His opening gambit was that he recommends lighter beers “for women.” No sooner was it out of his mouth than I was ordering the smoked porter. He looked suitable chagrined and beat a hasty retreat, but I was sickly comforted that, at more than a decade older than he, I was worthy of being looked after at a beer tasting.

I went ahead with the guided tour, and what struck me most was that the founder of Magic Hat, Alan Newman, definitely appears to be a pretty cool counterculture freak and yet has created not only a successful brewery but also several other companies, including Gardner’s Supply and Seventh Generation, which should ring a bell for anyone who’s ever searched for eco-friendly dish or laundry detergent. But none of his original passion came through in my tour. My experience at Magic Hat demonstrated to me that it was a company at at tipping point…in theory they espouse the artistic and personal freedom of their founder and yet have very much played into a corporate mindset pushing “fun” as their commodity (my bartender told me that the best way to make sure a trial beer makes it to bottling is to make a ruckus their Web site and social media).

I left feeling a bit like I’d been run through an amusement park, the most interesting part of which was not the beers, but the production line.

I continued up the road, rolling in to Burlington as the sun was setting. I saw the makings of a good photo op and dodged this way and that through their town center to the waterfront. It was truly beautiful…a colorful sunset over broad water ringed with purple mountains.

As the light faded from the sky, I headed back up the hill and picked up a chicken curry falafel from a storefront near the center of town. I found a bench on the Burlington pedestrian mall, which reminded me a lot of Charlottesville’s, and ate while watching a live band. I strolled the mall, stopping in to a neat bookstore where the proprietor looked like a hotter Jason Bateman, and then it was time to find a place for sleep for the night.

Friday dawned showery and with a full rainbow over my motel. It didn’t look like good weather for exploring Burlington, so decided to hit the road. By the time I’d gotten the car packed, it was starting to rain. I stopped in to a liquor store near the hotel looking for Heady Topper, a local beer made by Alchemist and recommended by my friend Brad. They were sold out. So I figured why not head up to the brewery and pick it up from the source? I merged on to I89 headed toward Waterbury with the intention of stopping at Alchemist and then heading toward Maine.

Immediately it started to pour buckets. The rain was sheeting across the highway, and my SUV was being blown too and fro. I couldn’t see a carlength in front of me. I don’t normally mind driving in bad weather, but I was on vacation with no timetable or set destination and wanted to avoid stress at all costs. So I made it to Route 100 and pulled off, ducking in to the Alchemist Brewery just before 11:00 a.m.

Alchemist is a brewery that focuses on one beer, the Heady Topper IPA. It’s a beer that’s heavily hyped and has its own cult following, so much so that even locals acknowledge it’s hard-to-come-by. With a Beer Advocate score of 100, it’s known for waves of smooth hops flavor. I had a taste, looked in on their small brewery, and walked out with a case. It was a Friday morning—the brewery isn’t open on weekends—and traffic was steady in and out of the place with massive amounts of money and silver cans changing hands. The woman who poured my tasting told me that they would sell out for the weekend in a couple of hours on a Friday morning, and that Heady Topper lasts only between 16 and 24 hours on the shelves in a few Burlington stores before it’s gone.

Case secured, I promptly went to the nearest supermarket and bought a bag of ice and loaded the beer in to my cooler. I felt like I was transporting an organ—this beer is so fresh and nonpreserved that it had to remain cool all time. And then I tasked my trained guard dog with protecting our haul.

It was still pouring rain, and the Ben and Jerry’s factory was nearby. Though I am not a huge ice cream fan, I needed something to do other than drive, so I took their tour. It was interesting only in so much as our guide was forced to elongate every “o” she said to sound like a cow. For example, “Let’s all moooove over to the production area, where you will see we are packaging a heath bar ice cream today.” Poor girl. We had samples of Late Night Snack at the end of the tour, and it wasn’t bad for an ice cream that features chocolate-covered potato chips.

Just as at Magic Hat, I was struck by the starting visions of Ben and Jerry’s founders, who got their start dabbling in something they found interesting. They learned how to make ice cream from a Penn State correspondence course, and now they have a thriving corporation that was acquired by Unilever. To hear stories such as theirs gives me hope that pursuing my interests may one day lead to the career of my lifetime.

It was still raining after the tour, and I didn’t want to waste my drive through the White Mountains if I couldn’t see anything. I started calling around for hotels. The Topnotch Resort and Spa was pet-friendly, so I booked a room there and decide to hole up and wait out the weather. While my room was being prepared, I had a great smoked turkey sandwich at the Prohibition Pig in Waterbury, along with a half of Heady Topper and another of Lawson’s Finest Maple Nipple Ale. Then I wandered into a lovely little bookstore nearby, Bridgeside Books, where I picked up a few cards and a 2013 calendar and had a nice chat with the proprietor.

By then it was time to head up to Stowe and check in to Topnotch and get out of the rain!

And so we resume our tour of the Shelburne Museum:

I went in to a huge post-and-beam barn filled with all sorts of carriages and wagons, including an old hearse and a Conestoga wagon. I was really struck by the typography on this ferry wagon. I found it incredibly skilled and beautiful:

With just paint, the artist managed to create a complexly shadowed, gilded letter that mimicked malachite. This is one of the most striking pieces of typography I’ve ever encountered and, sadly, my iPhone photo doesn’t do it justice.

Next I went on to the printmaking barn, where I got to try my hand at letterpress. And then on to the weaving barn, where beautiful looms made me want to learn how to weave. I took a weaving course in my second year of college, but it was more art-based than practical, and I think I would enjoy weaving more knowing I was making something I could wear instead of a hippy-dippy piece of dubious “art” to hang to hang on the wall of my opium den.

Another graphically impressive exhibit was in a huge long barn that was hung floor to ceiling with old tools. Here’s just a chunk of one wall, with some wood planes in the foreground:

The other side of this barn featured iron work, including many boot jacks. I got a laugh at these pornographic examples, tactfully displayed near the floor behind a low wall to protect the innocence of any visiting children.

There was an entire house (!) devoted to carved wooden bird and fish decoys. All were beautiful, and I took this picture for my mom. See, Mom, carved wooden swans are art!

Next I went in a few historic homes and log cabins, marveling all the while at how little space people need to live. I learned this lesson first-hand when I spent a few months in a small, one-room cabin in Alaska that was only accessible by boat or float plane, but it was nice to be reminded that the home I have now is, at 2,100 square feet, a relative palace. I guess when you don’t have a lot of crap you don’t need much room to store it, right?

Being on the road for the past ten days has further cemented my inclination that one doesn’t need a lot to live well. This is an idea I’ve danced around in various ways, beginning with my college ramblings and including my time in Alaska. But due to a recent major life change the question of how far I can pare down has resurfaced. This trip is confirming to me that I still possess a gypsy spirit and no desire to measure my success by how much I accumulate. In fact, I feel the inverse. It’s not a radical idea, but the less I possess the more freedom I feel. Even without my comfortable home and land in Free Union, which are a gift and blessing, I feel rich beyond measure with only a working vehicle, enough money to gas up the car, a small bag of clothes, a couple of pairs of boots, my beautiful dog Tucker, and a cooler full of Heady Topper.

Up next: Burlington and the Vermont brewery tour continues!

I was really excited to visit the Shelburne Museum because it features all sorts of things that I dig. Folk and decorative art, textiles, handcrafts and much more are on display in a collection of historic buildings, some of which, such as cabins and a lighthouse, had been relocated to the museum grounds.

There’s also a beached steamship, the 220-foot Ticonderoga! It was neat to wander its four levels and be reminded of how classy travel used to be. The interior was fitted with carved wood trim and leaded glass, and most surfaces were plush with upholstery. There were only five overnight rooms on the ship, but to peer in to them I shared the excitement that their occupants must have felt on their adventures. I am on an adventure too!

I was particularly taken with the beauty of this 80-foot-diameter round barn. According to the museum:

It is one of only two dozen built in the state [and] was constructed in East Passumpsic, Vermont in 1901. Round barns, designed for economy of labor, were first built by Massachusetts Shakers in 1826 and re-introduced by a national farm magazine in 1896.

The Round Barn was moved to the Museum in 1985-86. The 9,000-pound upper segment of the silo was flown across the state by helicopter, while the remainder was dismantled and moved on flatbed trucks.

The reconstruction was obviously done by skilled artisans, as evidenced by how the siding was scribed to the rock foundation. I thought that level of care and attention was pretty impressive!

One of my favorite exhibits was the apothecary, which was housed in an old general store building. I was struck by two things: one, how simple and beautiful the space was. It made modern drugstores look like psychotic temples to the twin gods of hypochondria and consumerism. Imagine the last time you went in to a store where there was only one item to cure your particular complaint—I bet you can’t. To my overloaded-with-choice modern mind, this limiting of options seems relaxing.

But I can imagine it from the other side too—and I can see how appealing new products, even if they were snake oil, would have been to people who in theory will always value choice so as to better exercise their individuality.

After taking a herbalism course last year, I was fascinated to see that so many of the remedies in this apothecary were plant-based. I am very familiar with many of the plants I saw, including skullcap, which I’ve relied upon heavily in the last couple of months to ease tension and quiet my racing mind, and arnica, which I liberally use in a cream for bruises and sore muscles.

The original pharmacist’s counter:

What you can only make out part of is the chimney to a hearth where medicines were prepared. Looks a lot like a kitchen, doesn’t it? Seeing this set-up reminded me of some of the speakers I’d heard at the Mother Earth News Fair, as well as my herbalism teachers, and my mom, who in their own ways drummed in to my head that “food is medicine.” I’m totally on board with that idea, but that’s a topic for another post.

Up next, we’ll continue our Shelburne Tour and then head to Burlington for a gorgeous sunset over Lake Champlain!

P.S. This is post number 300 on the Bonafide Blog. Three hundred seems like a big number to me, and I’m proud of myself to have made the time in my life to write about what’s important to me. Just as it takes time to create this blog, it takes your time to read it. And I thank you for following along! Four hundred, here we come!

Thursday morning I picked up a goat cheese and watercress sandwich from the Otter Creek Bakery in downtown Middlebury, Vermont. I ate half of it while wandering the small downtown area, which included a neat bookstore, the independent-since-1949 Vermont Book Shop, as well as an establishment smelling heavily of patchouli and alpaca sweaters.

I was in a great store featuring Vermont artists when I heard a loud roar outside. I thought it was some sort of mechanical equipment, but when I stepped on to the screened back porch I realized that the shop was actually cantilevered over a waterfall in the Middlebury River.

After my downtown wandering, I drove to the Middlebury College Museum of Art. I got Tucker out for a quick walk on the grounds and it didn’t take me too long to realize we’d stumbled in to the middle of a high school photography class field trip. Tuck posed by a pond for several budding artists and it gave me a kick to think his picture may be hanging on the wall for next week’s critique. Been there, done that!

The art museum, which has free admission, was showing a lovely little exhibit of original photos published in Alfred Steiglitz’s Camera Work. Camera Work, a magazine begun in 1903, was the most influential publication to elevate photography into the realm of fine art. To see images by Steiglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, and more felt like being among old friends, and it reminded me of how much I enjoy photography and how little of myself, over the past few years, I have devoted to something that used to be central to my identity. Perhaps this is a wake-up call.

From Middlebury I headed north out of town, still on Route 7. I hadn’t gotten very far until I came across Otter Creek Brewing. It was about eleven in the morning—certainly time for the first tasting flight of the day!

I sampled a range of offerings, from the lightest ales to the darkest stouts, and I have to admit that none really stood out to me as remarkable…which is pretty  much the conclusion I’ve come to buying their beers off the shelf in Virginia. Some of the Wolaver’s Organic beers made their way in to my flight, and I found them particularly lacking. Who knew pesticides make the beer tasted good?! Nonetheless, it was a great start to my brewery tour of Vermont, and drinking at eleven in Vermont sure beats sitting at work logging in to the day’s flash sale Web sites!

I finished my breakfast sandwich while walking Tucker in the field behind the brewery, where he snuffled out some ground-dwelling creatures in the duff, and then we hit the road toward our next destination, the Shelburne Museum.