Ah, Vermont. Green hills, massive overhanging trees, and misty farms. Fields of pumpkins and solar panels. Winding roads — so many named Hollow! And perhaps more cows than people.

Foliage hasn’t quite peaked but there are pops of red among the endless green. Driving the heavily wooded Route 100 is a spooky maze of leafy limbs and branches that reach for the car as we pass.

David, class of ’72, enters the Norwich University Athletic Hall of Fame. Students in baseball caps, “Old Guard” in tidy golf shirts and khakis, and a billion fleece vests — it’s a dreamy retro-wonderland.

We stay in a former 1950s roadside motel, one of the hip ones, rescued from destruction by an enterprising family with groovy green ideas and farm flourishes. Pleasant and friendly, we enjoy it.

Sitting by the Mad River, warming our feet on an outdoor fire pit. A few logs smolder, a happy reminder of revels at the original Flatbread Pizza, nestled (of course) on a farm a couple of green hills away.

Fresh Farm Fare

We order the Punctuated Equilibrium, a family favorite, and it’s better than we remember. I guess farm and fire pit rival picnic table by the bay. Flatbread’s creative fare is as fresh, delicious and colorful as Vermont herself.

Small children dance in the firelight as adults watch, amused and protective, over glasses of wine. We meet a couple from Maine and their three tiny fairies. One visitor relaxes by the fire in sheepskin slippers. This is Vermont conviviality — gentle humor by firelight.

Original Flatbread Pizza at Lareau Farm on the Mad River in Waitsfield — don’t miss it!

Buxom and Brick

We visit a beautiful Round Barn in Waitsfield, and cruise the former Vt. State Hospital, a sprawling brick complex on lovely green space. Curvaceous, buxom buildings with Rubens’ contours seem to be a voluptuous Vermont fetish.

This peaceful scene (rhymes with green) is a bucolic prequel to my upcoming getaway to New York City. I fly from sleepy Burlington over trees and endless green hills. We’ll be back. •