“The first week of October in Vermont is the unbearably beautiful American time and place. Brilliant yellow birch-covered hills slope down to glowing green meadows. Every sugar maple along every country lane combusts in scarlet and gold. The autumn sun brightens the white church steeples in the pretty valley towns. Plump pumpkins appear in orange pyramids outside the crossroads stores, and the smell of wood smoke hangs in the air. The intensity of the season so overpowers the senses that autumn cannot be remembered one year to the next, so its splendor always comes as a shock.”

Charles Kuralt