Last weekend, we got away to the Northwest corner of Vermont for a lovely, make that magical, gallivant enhanced by a Friend’s gracious hospitality.

The jaunt began with a long overdue stop at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire. Admittedly, sculpture – especially public statuary – has taken a lower rung on my visual awareness to painting, drawing, and printmaking. Let me say simply that this visit to the home – originally summer residence – of the American genius Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a revelation. The National Park Service has done a remarkable job in preserving not just his house and studio but in displaying his studies and castings of his memorable monuments. The glade devoted to the “Shaw Memorial” alone was worth the visit. And, let me add, the floral displays in the gardens at this time of year, when relatively little is blooming, were delightful. As for his work designing American currency, at the invitation of Teddy Roosevelt? The short take is we’re ready to return, soon.

That was followed by a late afternoon jaunt across the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge spanning the woefully low Connecticut River, due to an ongoing drought, into Vermont and eventually through the Green Mountains, taking a questionable route our host suggested through Rochester Gap and Middlebury Gap, one I doubt we would have found via GPS but altogether perfect. This was the real Vermont, not just twee but also working-class hanging in there, apparently happily so. We’re still wondering how many of these folks get to work through the winter.

Not much later we were sitting on his deck, sipping hard cider we’d brought from the Granite State and munching some amazing cheese from his locale. Oh, yes, while watching a feathery sunset stretching toward us from the New York State’s jagged Adirondack mountain range. Does life get any better than this?

The next morning brought my reason for being here, a committee meeting an hour to the north, and the first of two breath-taking mornings with a drive that included Adirondacks in the distance on one side of the highland farm country I traversed (with its seemingly contented dairy cows and huge barns), and the Green Mountains, a wall on the other side, along with glimpses of long Lake Champlain far below to the west.

Still, we weren’t seeing what we’d anticipated: signs of frost. Not all that long ago, northern New England – especially this far north – would have had a killing frost by mid-September. Instead, where we live, we’ve been able to get to the end of October with an occasional throwing blankets over the garden. In other words, global warming is real. And that frost, by tradition, is essential to the famed New England fall foliage.

Leap to Sunday morning, when we ventured off to Appalachian Gap in a second crisp, dewy morning with the mountains veiled in a haze – breathlessly, as it were. What surprised us the most was how quickly some trees were already in prime foliage, albeit surrounded by green. The color comes in waves, actually, and much of the glory depends on the ephemeral angle and quality of light more than the leaves themselves. So the autumn foliage was beginning to arrive. Just like that.

In the week since, it’s starting to appear where we live, too. And, to heighten our awareness, we know all too well what will follow, just a month hence.

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My essays and photographic slide shows on New England autumn foliage are available in the archives of my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog. Take a peek!