Andover
Date Visited: June 24, 2018
WikiPedia page
Baltimore
Date Visited: June 24, 2018
Website
WikiPedia page
I decided to write about Andover and Baltimore in the same post because driving up Andover Road or driving up Chandler Road off of Route 10 one sees images of life in Vermont that would never have appeared on the pages of the now defunct Vermont Life magazine. Such images conjure up the word hardscrabble in my mind. Impossible dwellings, patchworks of every building material I can think of from wood to corrugated sheet metal. Yards that have over time become museums for automobiles and farm equipment that no longer functions and have been left pretty much where they died. I would give a lot to know the stories of the people who populate these Vermont homes; who they are, their history, and how they live. You won’t see images of these places in this post because I chose not to take any pictures. It just seemed improper to me. But someone with more talent with a camera and a better command of the written word should.
I will say that Baltimore was not easy to find. One must first find Chandler Road off Route 10 and we passed it twice before deciding it wasn’t someone’s driveway. There’s only one way in and technically one road out although that road is an arc with two entrances. Driving up Chandler Road you enter a very old growth forest with deep ravines on the East side of the road. This road reminded me of when Robyn and I lived in Sandgate on Chunks Brook Road. In the good weather you could follow this road from Rte. 313 all the way up to what we call the Notch and proceed across the road to West Pawlet.
This poem is from the Baltimore website. I suggest you visit it.
Close to the side of Hawks Mountain
Where the sun’s rays brightly fall,
Nestles a town
Of some renown
Because of its area small.
A three-cornered clipping from Eden,
A haunt for the birds and the flowers,
No place is more blest
In all East and West
Then this land we love to call ours.
By Annie M. Pollard
