Despite the fact that Fall color has been quite rough this year in the Northeast (hurricane-force winds, catastrophic mold outbreaks, unfortunately high temperatures), the Vermont Workshop that I assisted Joe Rossbach with was a great success. Due to the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, the many road closures and washouts in South and Central Vermont forced us to move the workshop from Killington to Montpelier at the last second. Luckily, that allowed us much closer access to the Northeast Kingdom, which was coincidentally the area in Vermont with the “best” color this year.
We made the most of our three days of shooting and scouting before the workshop, driving over 700 miles around the state in order to find areas that didn’t totally suck – and we were reasonably successful. We found some great pockets of color in the Northeast Kingdom, near Willoughby Lake, in the Groton Woods State Forest, around Noyes/Seyon Pond. Very surprisingly, areas around Smugglers Notch and the Green Mountains were, well, green. It was a weird year, for sure, but I am still very happy to have visited. I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be back East in the autumn will be, since I will be in school for at least the next three years, but I can’t wait until then.
