As a talented photographer, Mikael Kennedy is always on the go, escaping from the clamor of New York City to calmer ground with his Filson gear and camera. In his latest post, Mikael revisits the countryside of his childhood with a week long trip to Vermont.
Summer in Vermont is often lived in a rain coat and a bathing suit. Growing up there I remember standing on my porch watching walls of water come across the valley towards me. You could feel the wind coming first, a welcome cold blowing through the trees, then the clouds would darken and it would hit like a freight train, often only lasting a matter of minutes.
Every summer now for the past few years we’ve returned to the motherland for a week or so of swimming hole runs, fires in the night, and slow rolls on the dirt roads we grew up on. We load up a caravan of cars with a few coolers and move from spot to spot on the river in Bristol, some secret, some overrun.
Starting at Bartlet Falls, then working our way up to Teacups with a stop by Cooley Glen to grab camping gear we’d forgotten the night before, some spots carry the names marked on maps, the others dreamed up when we were teenagers. The crowds grow the closer you are to town so we move further up the river, Old Mill being the last resort as we’ve been driven all the way up the mountain, a line of cars in tow winding through the small towns. Since Hurricane Irene some of our favorite spots have been wiped off the map but we hunt for new ones, a reason to wander in the woods following the sounds of the water.