PAUL CHRISTENSEN

We've been snow-bound here in central Vermont for the past five or six days. The roads are passable but slick, and I'm no expert on how to pull a car out of a slide. So I stay home. I have had to give up certain little escapes I give myself in the winter months, like shopping for groceries, wandering around the aisles of the natural food coop up the road, eyeing the cheap tools at the Wal-Mart store in Rutland, or waiting in line for a table at the Thai restaurant in Middlebu

Winter has settled in for the next few months, with its bony grip on the hillsides, the gray and balding trees, the sheet-metal skies. Houses are hunkered down on their dry slopes, like exotic birds with their plumes of chimney smoke. Over us, now and then, are flocks of Canadian geese cruising along in a loud conversation with one another. The sound is like some southern beauty parlor where gossip and laughter flourish. If birds laugh, it must be the noise of some throaty, g