[Dean Romig]

Deep in the woods in my section of Vermont's NEK I sometimes found old cellar holes and barn foundations, sometimes with daffodils and lilacs around the foundations. Often within the fieldstone foundations were huge spruce trees growing as if there had never been any settlers there at all. One that comes specifically to mind is the "old Hall place" (known locally only to the oldest natives of the area, like my mentor Hubert Simons, former fire chief of the St Johnsbury Fire Dept). Man, the stories he would tell... Hubert is long gone now as are the other old hunters in the camp where I got my start in about '56. The telling of those stories by Hubert, Uncle Jack, Scudder Parker and my Dad still ring in my ears... There were certainly others there before us.

Unfortunately most of those old stone cellar holes and foundations have been ground into the earth by the heavily chained and cleated tires of logging skidders.

The "Old Ford Cover" is one such place. Once there were the skeletal remains of three old Fords but fifteen of twenty years ago a logger with absolutely no respect for local history drove his skidder with a vengeance it seems, back and forth over the old Fords and now some of the younger hunters I know refer to the cover as "the tin pile" and that's a damn sad commentary.

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