The other day I was walking downtown for a meeting, when I reached the end of the world.
I found myself drawn to the blankness, walking out on Perkins Pier and looking into the vast expanse of nothing.
In that moment, I felt hopelessly small. Helpless, even. I was a tiny, insignificant dot on an immense lake, on a massive continent, on a gigantic planet that barely registered an existence in the overwhelming enormity of space. I was forgotten, forsaken, and lost.
Actually, I was just really fucking cold. I made that other stuff up.
Interestingly, this is what that view normally looks like:
People seem to enjoy hearing about my city almost as much as I enjoy bragging about it. Thus, the newest feature on Pavlov’s Hair Conditioner turns the spotlight to the beautiful and bizarre town of Burlington, Vermont.
The Queen City is gorgeous even by New England standards.
It’s a city of friends and farmers, of green living and great restaurants…
Now, I have nothing against the Masons – my own family has a lengthy history of membership – and the temple is no longer active anyway. But look at that massive mound of mortar and tell me you could stand in its shadow without feeling crushingly overwhelmed.
That building dominates one end of Church Street – the beautiful pedestrian shopping area at the center of town.
Burlington is very much a city of churches. There are four or five around Church Street alone, including the Unitarian building that gives the shopping center its name. And that’s just the start of it. As part of a required religion course, sophomores at Champlain College visit centers of worship around the city and learn about their culture. Despite hundreds of students flooding the holy buildings around town, rarely do any of them cross paths. There are more than enough beliefs present in the city to accommodate everyone. I’m not terribly religious myself, but I think there’s something beautiful about that, and it says a lot about the nature of the Queen City.
I’m rubbish at ending posts. Please contemplate the following pictures.
So the other day Lake Champlain froze over. For those not familiar with the lake, it’s pretty damn big. It spans two states and two nations. There are enough islands to form an entire county. It has its own climate. It was once the sixth Great Lake. And it used to freeze over every year.
See, used to be that when the lake didn’t freeze, people freaked out. On a February day in 1932, boats could actually sail from one side to the other. Not a single living person could remember that ever happening before. These days, though, thick ice is something of a novelty. In the past two decades, the lake froze over, or “closed,” only seven times.
Today was number eight.
This is apparently so bizarre that it made news in San Francisco.
Boy, do I have some pictures for you folks.
I climbed down the pier onto three-foot-thick ice, and instantly got a view of Burlington you can’t normally walk to.
The Spirit of Ethan Allen is a local tour boat. Their service was somewhat limited today.
It was really bizarre…
…to just walk around…
…to the other side of the boat.
I couldn’t tell where the land ended and the lake began.
A few other brave souls were out there with me.
The ice was so thick in places that construction vehicles operated on it. While we joked about walking across the lake, others drove there.
Here’s the marina, only slightly less in use than it would otherwise be.
Looking across to the Adirondacks:
Normally, ferries shuttle people and cars across the lake to Plattsburgh. Not today.
My ultimate goal was the breakwater, a long chain of rocks that protects our little harbor from the weather and currents of the lake. Past that, the ice wasn’t entirely trustworthy. This of course didn’t stop me, but I’m not proud to admit how far out my actual goal was.
Along the way, I met the nicest little couple. We’d stepped onto the ice at about the same time, and walked more or less together towards the breakwater.
When we got to the breakwater, I took their picture and they took mine.
Past that frozen chain of rocks lay the wasteland. Instead of the nice, smooth ice of the sheltered harbor, the lake beyond the breakwater had frozen into jutting chunks and uneven footing. I wanted to reach the halfway point, but soon discovered that would probably leave me too hospitalized or dead to upload these photos later. See, I care about you guys.
The breakwater was completely unrecognizable:
The ice covering the wall was surprisingly thick and chunky.
I began the walk back only to find that my two lovely companions were halfway there already.
Looking back at that great hill Burlington was built on:
The Echo Science Center, a Lake Champlain-oriented museum that I can’t say I’ve ever seen from this angle:
One final goodbye to the Spirit of Ethan Allen:
And with that, I slipped and skidded back up the hill and back to work. I’m not going to narrate that part of my day.
Half humor site, half travel blog, and probably the best use of your time right now