Copy and photos for Killington 4241 Magazine

It’s rush hour on a Friday evening and I’m playing chicken with a fat businessman in Grand Central Station. Shoulders down, elbows out, grasping my bulging pack, I can just see Ryan and Khari weaving through the fog of commuters ahead. The businessman clips my shoulder, hard, as he dips left, eyes narrowed on his train terminal, and I spin out of my slipstream into a stroller-wielding tourist. “Sorry! Sorry!” I mutter, using the stroller to propel myself back into the throng. Ryan’s found the ticket line, and we cram in with the other hundred people trying to claw their way out of the city for the weekend.

The glitz of Grand Central glamorizes the everyday grind of thousands of urbanites fighting for space and time in this dense city. Add to this the heat waves, stagnant subway cars, and air thick with smells I’d rather not describe, and the city can make for a miserable place to relax on your days off. To sidestep the 98-degree heat, our wealthier friends jettison to lounge poolside in the Hamptons every weekend; others swarm the city’s hive-like public beaches.

We’d decided it was time for a fresh take on our weekend getaway.

A friendly face appears in the crowd and it’s Randy, utterly calm and grinning. “Are you guys ready?” he says.

Photo credit: Khari Shiver

A silly question. I couldn’t be more ready. Randy has been a friend in the city for the past few years, but on this trip he was going to become something more—our local, inside guide to this weekend getaway. One-part city-savvy freelance design guru and one-part Vermont native, Randy fit easily into our club of weekend urban evacuees. I was sitting in my Midtown cubicle one steamy morning when an email from Randy rolled through my inbox:

“If you guys are serious about coming up to VT one weekend in July let me know. Possible activities include: Stand-up paddle boarding. Hiking to remote locations with incredible views. Rope swings and swimming holes. Tennis. Bonfires. Bbqing. Drinking Games. Mountain biking or road biking. Golfing. Lots of photo ops. Live music. Hang with some hippies. Check out the Long Trail brewery. Enjoy real Vermont Maple Syrup on homemade waffles.”

Sold. In fact, we're so sold that the four of us agreed to meet during the peak of the city’s mass exodus from Grand Central. Khari, an avid film photographer, Ryan, a soon-to-be medical school slave, and myself, a public TV producer, braved the bedlam and followed Randy into the mythical Vermont summer.

Fast-forward through frantic ticket purchases, more jostling and running, and soon enough we’re sitting sideways in a quiet car watching Yonkers whip by. Our caravan makes a quick stop in Greenwich to pick up Randy’s handy ride and to stuff our faces with gloriously thin-crusted pizzas at Colony Grill. Then our band of travelers takes off down the road, leaving the workweek behind.

Photo credit: Khari Shiver

Hours of easy conversation stitch the miles together as the sky darkens on the horizon and we keep winding north. I can feel something in me beginning to quiet, biorhythms already syncing as the landscape greens around us. Soon Randy warns us about a spot on the highway where the lights dip away, and the car plunges into the cool darkness of Rutland, our high beams washing over the sliver of road ahead. When the windows come down, the air is crisp and so clean; I press my face into the breeze from the moon roof and watch the stars slip by.

“Whoa. A closed gas station,” says Khari. We all laugh at the observation before realizing that it's a fitting metaphor for resetting our surroundings. Our vacation has begun, though our destination is still miles away.

After what seems like hours without passing another car, Randy pulls over to an abrupt stop and our stiff-legged crew tumbles out, confronted with a silent expanse of black water framed by looming mountains. We feel our way down a wobbly set of stairs until our feet touch a swaying wooden dock. “We might see shooting stars,” Randy says, seconds before the first of many streaks across the dark. Minutes crawl by without headlights peeking over the horizon and we lay on our backs in silence, the water lapping against the wood beneath us.

Our late-night drive ends at the top of a steep gravel road—the Elles’ residence is hard to make out at night, a wide lawn and deck circled by forest. We trudge into our basement bedrooms and let the dark and the quiet fold in around us, immediately falling into the kind of effortless slumber that’s hard to find in the city.

At 10 a.m. the next day, we’re roused like bears from hibernation with only one thing on our minds: maple syrup. Cameras and the day’s necessities are piled into the car and we’re off, zipping over the hills with the windows down and the music up. Khari’s shutter clicks away at every mountain and postcard-worthy farmhouse. Remnants of [Hurricane] Irene’s damage linger in the landscape—crumbled barn facades, exposed roots pointing downstream, shiny new bridges clashing with their rustic surroundings—but the scenery is vibrant and buzzing with life and resilience.

We make a leisurely stop at Blanche & Bill’s to fill our bellies with blueberry stacks smothered in homemade brown syrup. The pancake house’s one-room dining area is speckled with fellow late-risers, and everyone seems to know each other by name. Randy is asking the waitress about her recent golf game when his mother strolls in to grab a quick bite and say hello. It’s warm encounters like these that confirm Vermont’s reputation as the “anti-Hamptons,” a place where getting away also means really getting to know a new place. We’re also about to find out that “vacation” means more than mimosas and infinity pools.

Belts bulging, our next stop is Killington Mountain to meet the flame-headed Chandler Burgess, interactive director for the resort and host-extraordinaire. He greets us at the door with his backpack at the ready, his flip-flopped feet already encrusted with mud. We stop at the tip of a trailhead to survey the mountainous landscape, and to check on a camera he’s set up to capture a time-lapse of construction of the new Killington Peak Lodge. Our last visit to Killington had been in the winter, its white peaks teeming with helmeted riders and blanketed with powder. Today, all but one of the lifts are frozen in suspense and mountain bikers have replaced boarders and skiers on the steep trailways. The group clamors into the gondola and the ground breaks away beneath us—a surreal experience now that verdant forest growth has replaced the snow.

Photo credit: Khari Shiver

At the top, our crew sets off into the forest, passing clusters of backpackers fresh off the Appalachian Trail. The flora in Vermont is richer and lusher than the gray upstate New York wilderness to which we’re accustomed. Building up a sweat, we work our way upward, tramping on damp moss and photogenic fern beds. A pant-worthy rock scramble at the peak gives way to breathtaking views of the mountain chain and a breeze that is generous and cool.

Within the hour, the crew has traded Killington Peak for glassy lake waters and four stand-up paddle boards. After a couple of dunks in the water, the sun begins to peek out from behind the clouds and we dip our paddles again and again into the lake. It’s the perfect way to enjoy our serene surroundings, with the sun on our shoulders and cans of Long Trail perched on the tips of our boards. Around the bend, a group of men have gathered to install a new rope swing with a metal handlebar. Their handiwork pays off and their bodies make clean arcs and raucous splashes in the otherwise calm waters.

That night, dinner is an unfamiliar ritual—sitting down at a table with family for a communal meal of grilled chicken and steak, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh root beer for ice cream floats. Dessert is a long hot-tub soaking under the stars. Over and over, we hurl a tennis ball deep into the woods for Randy’s golden lab, Spanky, who sniffs concentric circles into the lawn and disappears into the darkness with a flash of yellow tail. He brings it faithfully back every time, dropping the drool-drenched ball into the hot soup to be tossed again.

Photo credit: Khari Shiver

When we settle in for bed, I can’t believe it’s only Saturday.

The next morning we’re quicker out of the gate for pancake-a-palooza part deux. Mountain Creamery is a bustling joint in the manicured, historic town of Woodstock, armed with a mile-high apple pie and staffed by quick-witted, no-nonsense ladies in aprons. We take a tour of the town afterwards to work off the pancakes and maple sausage links, then trace the back roads in the car, passing lone dairy farms, cow pastures, forest, and more forest.

Back in Killington, it’s time to bike. We pull into First Stop Ski Shop and get outfitted with bikes and helmets. After a quick lesson on how to change gears and work the breaks, we're off for Thunder Falls. The ride winds us through more picturesque Vermont countryside before placing us at the trailhead for the falls. A short walk on an elevated walkway surrounded by wildflowers places us at the falls in short order. We clamber our way up the falls, exploring the surrounding forest, before heading back to the bikes for our ride home.

Road biking, backwoods hiking, blueberry pancaking, stand-up paddle boarding, barbecuing and late-night hot-tubbing—it’s hard to believe that these were the products of a short weekend sprint in Vermont, rather than a week-long adventure retreat. I gaze out the rear window as those green mountains disappear behind us, feeling sad but also more relaxed than I’ve been in a long, long time.

“There’s always autumn,” Randy says with a smile.