"Home is where your story begins" is one of two signs we have hanging in our house. The other sign claims it to be, "Just Another Day In Paradise." I've always struggled with the idea of home and so I often read the first as more of a philosophy than an affirmation. (The second sign I hung for Wayne) I continually ask myself when encountering new to me places, "Why are people here? What is it that brought them to this place?" This may sound odd to most until you learn that I grew up in the military. My home growing up was where my family was and with those familiar items that we were able to lug around the country with us. Other than that, home was VT because that is where we returned each summer to visit gravestones and relatives.
With a few alterations, my mother hung the same curtains in her kitchen at each house that we lived in. Later when we were helping mom to downsize I came across a pair of curtains and mentioned how I remembered them. It was then that she confided to me that story and how it was her way of creating a feeling of familiarity in new places. I did the same with paint colors and flooring when we jumped the river to live in Vernon. It was only recently that I changed the wall color from pink to an updated Sherwin Williams palette to many comments of "what took you so long?" Apparently home is not a paint color. But for me, neither is it where I was born and our adult children no longer live here. Maybe it could be said that for me, home is where my current dogs sleep and where the best dog ever is buried.
We are fast approaching Indigenous Peoples Day and with it the colors are making Vernon more inviting than ever. We were on our way to Market 32 in hopes of scoring apple pie fixings when I asked Wayne to pull into Indian Point. I walked back and forth the length of the land trying to understand the meaning of it. The Vernon Historians as of late have been documenting parcels of historical significance in town and I suppose that was playing a role in my questionings. When wandering about up top didn't satisfy my curiosity, I managed to descend the steep bank without tumbling (making a scene). My journey abruptly ended as the river is separated from the point by railroad tracks.
Meanwhile, Wayne who remained up top, had noticed two markers and as I was ready to hop back in the car with a few pictures of foliage to show for our visit, he pointed them out.
I often need to take breaks while writing as I become bogged down with emotionally attached details. As we walked towards the rec discussing my writing, Wayne reminded me of the story about when Indian remains were discovered in Bellows Falls. We have heard from more than a few people that a burial place had been disturbed during the days of their paper mill industry. Bellows Falls actually does have many artifacts from Indigenous Peoples including petroglyphs so the story seemed plausible. Folklore would have it, that those discovered bones were placed in storefront windows in town as some sort of novelty.
The marker at Indian Point in Vernon is in memoriam of "Indian Woman Tribe Unknown CA. 1650. Reinterred Nov. 5, 1994." What is she doing here? What brought her to this place? Who are her people? Was this land her home or was she hear for some other purpose? I was having trouble connecting the importance of this narrow strip to her people.
A day later while reflecting on my pictures, it dawned on me that the woman didn't live here. She instead lived in a time when the river flowed freely and didn't cover the land as it does now. There wasn't a state road between her and the hills on the other side, nor was there a railroad track in her path to the river. Her home didn't have a stone foundation anchoring it into Vernon dirt. She wasn't on her way to Market 32 because she gathered from the land what she needed. Present day geo political borders and survey stakes had no meaning for her. While I strained to see over a fence and between saplings to take photographs of NH across from the point, she would have been traveling through old growth forest. Our modern constructs and our barriers to the water and land would make this place unrecognizable to her. Would her descendants, if they were to live in Vernon, be able to find the places their dead are resting? Where are the rest of her people's historical markers? Maybe they are the Black Gum Trees in the town forest or the cold brooks that flow into the mighty Connecticut, or the hawks that look down on the earth from the heavens. But maybe, just maybe they are the hills of the Green Mountains that so many Vermonters now call home.
"Their (Abenaki) connection to the land as indigenous people is an integral and foundational aspect of this place..."* I've always struggled with "home." Perhaps my younger brother Charles isn't too far off when he says, "The woods are my church." And when my mother tells me that two things are important, "Family and God." she too has found her home. For Wayne and I, perhaps home is our family, in our connection to each other, and the time we spend discovering all that life has to offer here in Vernon. -Norma Manning
*Native American Past in Brattleboro, Brattleboro Historical Society; reprinted by The Brattleboro Reformer.
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