(HOST) The sun in Vermont, according to Commentator Anne Averyt, is like Hamlet. It can’t seem to make up its mind whether to be or not to be. But perhaps that makes it sexy…
(AVERYT) Thanks to my extended cable package, I watch the sun rise gloriously every morning. Sunrise Earth beamed in vivid color and high definition clarity – which is a good thing because in Vermont the sun doesn’t rise most mornings – or so it seems.
Burlington’s cloud cover is the state tourist agency’s best kept secret. A cover-up worthy of Nixon and Watergate. Next to Seattle, Burlington has the fewest sunny days in the country. It’s a top designation we’d rather not talk about. Like the fact that, according to Men’s Health Magazine, Burlington is the second least sexy city in America.
Thanks to that miracle of TV, I can ignore the gloom and on an overcast morning watch the sun climb above a mountain ridge in Tibet or cast a pink net deep into the Florida everglades.
On a recent morning, as I watched an enormous sun shimmer out of the ocean, small letters on the TV screen gave me some perspective. Sunrise that morning was beamed from Australia’s Great Coral Reef, where there are no seasons because the sun sits so high in the sky. The same sun that nurtures a richly diverse aqua-system makes land boring in its sameness.
My sister has lived in Florida for a quarter century, nearly as long as I have lived in Vermont. She says what she misses most in that temperate fantasyland is change. While here we witness dramatic seasonal personalities, in Florida the months move with only minor temperature fluctuations and monotonous vegetation.
Reflecting on it, as I breathe in the aphrodisiac of autumn air, I think Burlington is pretty sexy.
Even as the chlorophyll weeps out of Vermont’s sugar maples, the mountainsides ignite in a blaze of sizzling orange, lemon zest, and sparkling burgundy. If I look east to the mountains, I can see the flapping skirts of Moulin Rouge dancers; hear the squawking geese announce a wardrobe change.
Sunlight is contracting now, November and December approach with their short days and heart of darkness. Fortunately, when I get up in the black night of daybreak, I can turn the sun on, watch it rise seductively on TV. In dreary midday, I can turn on my full spectrum lamp to make light of my seasonal affective disorder.
In others words, I have ways to cope. I can bring light into my life here in cloudy Vermont; but the only way my sister in Florida can capture the smell of autumn air and the crunch of falling leaves is to hop on a plane and come visit me up here in paradise.
Yes, I think Burlington is a very special and a very sexy place to live, after all.