A giant ice-cold pitcher of icy water, that is what it felt like after diving into the deepest fishing hole in my mountain stream in Calvin Coolidge State Park. We had been camping at a remote lean-to in the Green Mountains of Vermont for three days, and a bath was in order. Although it was afternoon in early August the stream roiled and rolled down the mountain as it had rained heavily the night before. The white water sprinted to the finish line, cold and crisp and numbing to the fingers and toes. This was an area of Vermont chock-full of white marble with a quarry nearby. The bed of the stream was full of large chunks of marble. The curious fish that had come to see what all the commotion was, did not realize how grand their stream was as they swam enrobed in a pool of white Vermont marble. True it was not the same quality as the Italian Marble quarries that Michelangelo had trudged through in Italy, shopping for trapped figures that he envisioned, but Vermont marble had been used for a number of important government buildings in Washington DC, including the Jefferson Memorial in the United States Supreme Court. Between the supplies of Vermont marble, the services of Calvin Coolidge our 30th president born two miles away, and the Green Mountain Boys that took Fort Ticonderoga from the British in the Revolutionary War, Vermont had done its part for the new country. My teeth were chattering now so I made a speedy exit from my refreshing, fluvial marble bath.
Jim - July 25’
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