Three of us walked into the dilapidated hangar and shook the hand of a small sharp-eyed man with a droopy white moustache and hair rolling over his collar. He slid into his cockpit easily, and the little four-seater lurched from the runway, jumping the snow-bumps, into central Vermont's frosty morning air. Below us lay thousands of acres of forest, leafless dark sticks on the slopes, poking skywards.
We landed and exchanged the air waves for the beaten-snow roads that run deep into the Vermont back-country. The land became pretty, with scattered homesteads, old tilting clapboard houses, ruggedly welcoming, and always a fringe of trees. Behind them, more trees.
We were on foot, padding up a snow-drifted road, our snow shoes sinking a few inches despite the weight distribution, sometimes supported by the crust. Modern snowshoes have a hinge at the toe, so you can lift your heel and the shoe stays horizontal when moving forwards.
Our forest guide picked out a beech tree. "See the scrambled fork," he said, pointing to a junction half-way up, from which branches splayed out like skins of peeled bananas. "That is where the bears have feasted." Then he showed us the dark parallel lines of the claw marks running down the tree trunk. "The mother bears take up the cubs and in hard weather they eat the branches of the beech. See, here a tree with claw marks, there one without. Having found a sweet-tasting tree, she teaches them to return to it."
We bushwhacked through to the ridge from where Mount Washington could be viewed. Our gaze travelled incalculable miles to a snowy ridge with a conspicuous cone. The light was perfect, the sky a bird's-egg blue. No wind, no perceptible breeze, only the total stillness peculiar to frozen woods.
Homewards lay the beaver pond, an open snow area sliced by sudden declivities, surrounded by brooding spruce. The trick in this thicker snow was to stay on the top. My son Ivar, breaking trail, immediately collapsed in a drift. To get out, you unwrap your snowshoe-shod feet gingerly to avoid pulling a muscle. Getting to your feet again requires assistance. We plodded the crusty swamp and joined the trails of moose in the dense underbrush on the far edge. Hare marks crossed our path, and a pile of spruce-cone shells betrayed a squirrel; a willow grouse flew by. Word had it that the only wild turkey living locally had been eaten by a coyote.
You are permitted, even expected, to look fairly bushwhacked when you walk into a farmer's diner. Everyone else, after all, is in lumberjack shirts and stomping snow boots, leather gloves flopping from the bum pocket, and duck-shooter hats. Men's whiskers were sinking into the milkshakes made from the owner's guernsey cows. Women's hair was piled high.
New England food can be disconcerting. The French fries and side orders of grilled bacon and pancakes loaded with butter and swimming in maple syrup form a breakfast needing a mighty platter. Coffee is filled repeatedly as you wade into this robust New World riposte to nouvelle cuisine.
We had hired a truck the size of a semi-detached. My son asked why we were using hotels when we could each have a suite in the back. The answer was, it was 30 below.
Roads and snow are not allowed to interact. Vast machines, travelling at cracking speed, blade the stuff out of the carriageways. The kerb is cleared, too. Other contraptions suck the white stuff up, then spout it away from the road through elevated funnels.
When I hung up my snow-shoes for the last time, a thought occurred: here we had been in poor weather, in a wild sort of country, yet everything had been possible. Had we wanted to ski, skate or go ice-fishing in the middle of the lake, as everybody else seemed to be doing, that would have been OK, too.
There is a sense in which every activity in New England is a celebration. The celebration is of a nice region at a pleasant stage of un-development. Opportunity is all around. All you have to do is pick it up and go.
Way to go
Getting there: Air Canada (0870 5247226, aircanada.com) flies London-Montreal from £338 return plus £48.10 in taxes, valid January 5-March 31.
Where to stay: The Plaza Hotel, Montpelier (+802 223 5252, capitolplaza.com) from $88 for a large double. The Woodstock Inn & Resort (+802 457 1100, woodstockinn.com), from $199 for a double.
Snowshoe hire: Onion River Sports, 20 Langdon Street, Montpelier, VT (+802 229 9409, onionriver.com).
Further information: Vermont Attractions Association (+802 229 4581, vtchamber.com). Country code: 001. Flight time Heathrow-Montreal: 7hrs, 20mins. Time difference: -5hrs. £1 = 1.66 US dollars.
