Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 27

Santa's elves steering clear of the Jarts

Christmas is fast approaching, which means that somewhere in the North Pole, Santa and his elves are loading his great red sleigh. One toy you will not see amidst the Barbie dolls, Skylanders, and boxes of Lego are lawn darts – a.k.a., Jarts. Lawn darts were the scud missiles of my childhood. They were foot-long darts with thick metal points. A kid was supposed to lob them gently at plastic rings you placed in the grass. Yeah, right. We would hurl them as high into the sky as we could. Sometimes, we would hurl them as high as we could from attic windows. I have memories of diving under trees with my hands over my head like a helmet. The Internet is awash in Lawn Dart disasters, and the versions with metal tips were banned for sale in the United States in 1988.

Good call. It’s a miracle the Jarts Generation ever made it to adulthood.

The other day I visited toy stores to see what’s out there for kids now: What might Santa be bringing this season? I began at Jamie Two Coats Toy Shop in Shelburne, Vermont. There, owner Nancy Barringer and her twin nine-year-old daughters, Lucy and Celi, gave me a tour.

First of all, if you have girls between the ages of three and ten, you have to visit the back room of the store, which I swear is where Cinderella and Snow White do all of their shopping. There must have been 150 princess capes and gowns, all between $10 and $75. There were also swords with grips and pommels made of wood, but the scabbard crafted from reinforced felt. In other words, no lawn dart dangers here.

And on a wall opposite the Kate Middleton dressing room (yes, the British Princess isn’t always topless), are some of the coolest toy soldiers and action figures I’ve ever seen. We’re not talking bags of monochromatic plastic soldiers an inch-and-a-half high. These characters includes Roman warriors, crusaders from the Middle Ages, pirates, and figures from the Wild West – all impeccably painted and richly detailed. They cost between $8 and $14.

The store imports many of its toys from Europe, and Nancy showed me one item from France that I photographed and showed to my wife: Le Petite Armoire. Imagine a miniature, old-fashioned steamer trunk that stands vertically – like an armoire. Inside are a stuffed bunny and a stuffed mouse, their shelves and their clothing. It’s pricey – $96 – but when my wife looked at the photo, she smiled and said that our daughter would have loved it when she was a little girl.

Finally, consider the Haba Baby Airy-Fairy Baby Swing – if, of course, you have a baby. It would just be creepy to buy one for yourself. The swing looks like a parachute, complete with chute, suspension lines, and harness. Hang it from the ceiling so it almost touches the floor, and then strap your nine to eighteen-month-old into it. Apparently, kids love it. The swing costs $149.

I also visited Toys R Us in Williston, Vermont and happily wandered the aisles there. A big box store like Toys R Us has lots of licensed, TV, and videogame-inspired merchandise, but sometimes caving in to popular culture is not the worst thing you can do. Exhibit A? Doc McStuffins. She’s an animated six-year-old girl on the Disney Channel, and she repairs broken toys and stuffed animals. There are a lot of Doc McStuffins toys out there, and it’s hard for some stores to keep the merchandise in stock.

Same with Disney Junior’s Jake and the Never Land Pirates: They’re a line of toys that are linked to a TV show, and they are (to paraphrase Peter Pan) flying off the shelves.

My sense is that Santa’s elves manufacture items for both Jaime Two Coats and Toys R Us, and ship toys to both stores. But those original lawn darts? I’ll bet the elves keep those bad boys for themselves.

(This column ran originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 2, 2012. Chris’s next novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” goes on sale on July 16, 2013.)

The gift that keeps on giving: A parking space

This is, to quote a classic Christmas ditty, the most wonderful time of the year – assuming, of course, that you have not been trying to find a parking space at the shopping mall since Friday. It has now been two full days since “Black Friday,” that moment each year when retailers and consumers celebrate the real meaning of the season: An HD TV the size of a billboard. There are still First Responders out there working tirelessly to find shoppers who have disappeared into the furthest reaches of Walmart parking lots in Iowa.

And yet, in theory, bricks-and-mortar retailers are being brought to their knees by e-commerce: By the likes of amazon, zappos, and buy.com – and by the websites of such chains as Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret. Based, however, on the crowds that I have seen in stores this past week, the reports of the death of bricks-and-mortar retailing have been greatly exaggerated.

This time of year there are also news stories about the ways that retailers try and seduce us into spending money. One tactic? Because most people are right-handed, we turn to the right when we enter a shop. So, the retailer puts the tempting – and more expensive – new merchandise to the right. The recommended solution? March left when you walk in, thus ensuring that you will only buy the less tempting, less expensive stuff that nobody wants.

An even better solution? Have a budget and stick to it. Use common sense. Just say no to anything you have seen before at 35,000 feet in the Sky Mall catalog.

As a reader, I have a particular fondness for bookstores. I don’t read books yet on Kindles, Nooks, or my phone; I still prefer paper. Consequently, I savor the simple act of wandering aimlessly among stacks and shelves. I might find the books I was thinking about for friends or family before I arrived at the store, but I am just as likely to find books that I hadn’t considered – and would not have considered purchasing on-line, because I had never bought anything quite like them before so they never appeared as recommendations.

A perfect example of this? Last month, during the desperate chaos that marked Superstorm Sandy, my daughter came home from lower Manhattan, where she goes to college, because her dorm had been without power for three days. I met her at the bus station in Albany with a couple of paperbacks I picked up for her on the way there at the Vermont Bookshop in Middlebury: “Room” by Emma Donoghue and “When She Woke” by Hillary Jordan. I would never have thought to order either book from amazon or bn.com. Make no mistake, I still buy a lot of books on-line (to be honest, I still buy a lot of everything on-line). But the thing about bookstores is that we do not simply find what we want; we find what else we want.

And I believe this is true for clothing, as well. And furniture. And, based on the back of my wife’s car, cat toys. (My wife volunteers at Homeward Bound – the Addison County Humane Society – in Middlebury, working with the cats there. As a result the back of her car looks like an aisle at the Pet Food Warehouse.)

Obviously the digital world has dramatically changed shopping. I would never have found at any store in Vermont the retro Pan Am overnight bag that I bought for my wife last month.

But there is still something satisfying about browsing – and being surprised.

One final thought: Given the profound economic hardships that so many of our neighbors are facing this winter, please be generous with the less fortunate and factor charitable giving into your holiday shopping budget. This year’s “Free Press” Giving Season charities are Warmth, the Committee on Temporary Shelter, the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, and Spectrum Youth and Family Services. Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much better feeling than placing a personalized barbecue branding iron under the tree.

* * *

Chris's most recent novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," is a finalist for the Goodreads Readers' Choice Award in Historical Fiction. You can vote for it here:

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...

One last time to vote for the Goodreads Readers' Choice Awards

First of all, BIG thanks to all of my friends here on Goodreads. "The Sandcastle Girls" is a Goodreads Readers Choice Finalist in Best Historical Fiction.

The category is filled with absolutely wonderful books by Laura Moriarty and Hilary Mantel and Bernard Cornwall -- to name only a few of the immensely talented novelists on the list.

Below is the link to vote one last time. (And, I promise, it is the last time.) The voting continues another week or so.

Again, a thousand thanks for your faith in my work over the years.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...

This Thanksgiving, let's strive for the summit

This Thursday is that day of the year when we gather together with family or friends and say a prayer of thanks that my mother took her recipe for Broccoli Mold to her grave. This year, however, is one of those Novembers when Thanksgiving should mean more to us than the start of a four-day weekend or the chance to watch ten hours of young men in helmets causing concussions and early-onset dementia. (Yes, I do watch football. I watch a lot of football. But I’m starting to feel a little guilty. Think Christians and lions. Last week alone three quarterbacks left games with concussions.)

In addition to the holiday being a day of thanks, perhaps it’s time to view the day as something more: A secular Yom Kippur. A Pilgrim day of atonement. We have an enormous amount to be thankful for as a nation, but also profound issues we need to address. Here are four challenges that, in my opinion, transcend party lines.

Let’s begin with global climate change. In the wake of the cataclysmic damage wrought by Superstorm Sandy – not, despite the rumors, named after my late father-in-law – a friend posted on Facebook that it was hubris to suggest that humans could really impact global climate. No, it’s not hubris. It’s science. And it’s unequivocal. It’s based on data dating back 650,000 years. The current warming trend is especially disconcerting because it’s occurring at a speed unseen in the past 1,300 years. And while it may seem that as individuals we can do little to prevent rising seas and warming skies and the creation of catastrophic hurricanes, there are actually ways we can make a difference. Eat less meat, for starters. Walk more. Coordinate your errands that demand a car. Use mass transportation.

Second, let’s work to end childhood poverty and homelessness. I have shared the following sorts of numbers before, but they bear repeating. Roughly one and a half million children are homeless in America, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. Becky Holt, Development Director at the Committee on Temporary Shelter in Burlington, Vermont, told me that in October there were 118 children in the Chittenden County school system and Grand Isle who were homeless. The key to ending homelessness is prevention – get people help before they lose their homes – and over the last four years, COTS has prevented more than 1,300 households from winding up in its shelters or on the street through its Housing Resource Center. Consider sacrificing a movie or a dinner out this month and sending that money to COTS.

Third, outlaw cigarettes. Not kidding. No good comes from smoking. It literally kills people. And the economic ramifications on our health care system are massive and impact us all. If we can make it a law to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle or to buckle a seatbelt while driving a car – if New York City can ban supersize sodas – we can outlaw smoking. Would this law result in a Prohibition era crime spree? Maybe. But what John Toland christened “The Dillinger Days” led to some great movies and books – and no crime wave could ever be as deleterious as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cigarette smoking accounts for close to half a million deaths every year.

Besides, the fear of a crime spree brings me to my fourth issue: Gun control. (Yes, this is a bipartisan issue: Democrats are as spineless as Republicans when it comes to serious gun control.) I have no objections to my friends and neighbors owning hunting rifles. Really, I don’t. I’m a vegetarian who understands the need to manage the North American deer herd. But I do object to civilian access to the sort of assault weapons no one needs to bring down a buck. The Aurora movie theater slaughter was four months ago. It’s only a matter of time before we see that picture again.

Our Pilgrim (and Puritan) ancestors were far from perfect. Let’s face it, they put buckles on their hats. But they had a vision and a dream – building a colony that a world could look up to like a city upon a hill. This Thanksgiving, let’s try once more to climb to that summit.

* * *

Chris's most recent novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," was published in July. It was a Washington Post and Library Journal best book of the year.

The Light in the Ruins: A preview

Greetings!

"The Light in the Ruins," my next novel, arrives on July 16, 2013.

Some of you have asked me what it's about. So, below, I offer a brief preview: The prologue.

Happy reading!

PS: If you want to add "The Light in the Ruins" to your Goodreads "To Read" queue, click here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...

* * *

A woman is sitting before an art nouveau vanity, brushing her hair in the mirror. It is, at least according to the police report, somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, on the first Tuesday of June 1955. For dinner she ate a small portion of an impossibly rich pasta – a fettuccini with pecorino cheese and great ladles of truffle oil – at a restaurant popular with wealthy American and British expatriates five blocks west of the Uffizi and a block north of the Arno. She was one of the few Italians there who wasn’t a part of the kitchen or the wait staff. She has since bathed, soaping off both her own perfume and the cologne that was worn by her dinner companion – the fellow who would come back here to the apartment, make love with her on the thin bed no more than three feet from the vanity, and then leave. He was a suspect in the murder investigation, but only briefly. If he had had even the slightest inclination to spend the evening, there is every chance that I would have executed him that night, too.

At the moment, she is wearing her nightgown (which is not especially revealing), though at some point very soon it will be cut off of her. Yes, cut. Not even pulled over her head. Sliced from the opening at her collarbone down to the hem that, when she stands, is mid-shin. By then, of course, she will be dead. Bleeding out. I will have sliced open her neck from one side of her jaw to the other.

Just so you know, that art nouveau vanity is not particularly valuable. The white paint is chipped and two of the whip-like finials along the right side broke off years ago. Before the war. Moreover, her nightgown is cotton, and the material has started to pill. I mention this so you are not envisioning this room as more glamorous than it was. The woman is still beautiful, even now at middle age and despite the horrific, seemingly unbearable losses she endured a decade earlier in the last year of the war. These days, she lives in a neighborhood of Florence that is solidly working class, a section the tourists visit only when they are impressively, almost impossibly lost. A decade earlier, she would not have known a neighborhood like this even existed.

The apartment has neither a doorman nor a primitive intercom connecting the wrought-iron and frosted glass street door with her modest unit. It is locked, but not all that difficult to open. (Really, it wasn’t.) According to the police report, at some point in that rough three-hour window in the early hours of that first Tuesday in June, I used a blunt object (the handle of my knife, as a matter of fact) to break a pane of the glass near the doorknob. Then I reached in and turned the lock, opening the door. Remember, this is an unassuming little building. Then I moved silently up the stairway to the third floor where she lived and knocked on her door. She rose from the vanity, her brush still in her hand, and paused for a moment on her side of the wood.

“Yes?” she asked. “Who is it?”

And here I lied. I said I was her dinner companion, speaking into my gloved hand to muffle my voice.

So she opened the door and would be dead within moments.

And why did I slice open her nightgown? I didn’t violate her. It was so I could cut out her heart. A woman with the lilting name of Francesca Rosati who had once been a Tuscan marchese’s daughter-in-law was my first.

But, as you will see, not my last.

Your passport to fun -- tips to clear customs fast.

Last month I had the great pleasure of sharing my passport with border officers when I was traveling to Quebec and Ontario on a book tour. I love my passport, because right now it has visas for Syria and Lebanon. These days, there is little that causes more conversation with a uniformed official on either side of the U.S./Canadian border than a passport that looks like mine.

Given the amount of time I spend with border officers or with customs officials at airports, here are some tips to make sure that you, too, can move effortlessly through Passport Control.

Let’s begin with those anxious moments when you are traveling by car and arriving at the booth at the border. Always remove your sunglasses, smile, and say politely, “Please don’t open the trunk.” If you are driving an SUV or pickup, pile as many boxes as you can possibly fit into the rear of the vehicle. Cover them with blankets and tarps. Be sure and point them out to the officer by saying, “I know you’re busy, so you don’t need to look under those blankets. Really, there’s nothing there you need to worry about.”

You always want to make sure that the officers can hear you from inside their booths, so I always shout at the top of my lungs as a courtesy. If you have interesting music available – on the radio, on a CD, on your iPod – share it. Border officers are people, too, and there is nothing they want more than to be a part of your party. In my experience, they enjoy heavy metal, especially when you bang along on your steering wheel and yell out the names of the bands: “This is Cannibal Corpse, dude! Want me to make you a mix?” If you do not have any heavy or death metal available, bring along your favorite Middle Eastern music CD.

Finally, make sure your car smells of ammonia.

Now, if you are traveling by air and thus passing through passport control at an airport, it can be a little more difficult to make friends with the officials. After all, you can’t win them over by putting your car in “park” and then gunning the engine as a joke. Consequently, it is important to begin by making eye contact, smiling, and asking them something personal about their lives. I like to begin by asking them if they have any secret tattoos. Other options? Ask them if they are married or have small children. If you really want to spend lots of quality time together with your new friends at customs, ask them if they have recently spotted a drug dealer or terrorist or celebrity. Ask them where the bomb-sniffing dogs are. My point? Don’t just talk about yourself. Invite them into your world. They will thank you – and so will the people in line behind you!

And, of course, have your passport ready. Sometimes, to make everyone’s lives easier, I like to point out the more interesting visas and stamps on mine. These days nothing starts a conversation better at passport control than having been to interesting, faraway lands.

Sadly, passports expire every ten years, and I have to get a new one this winter. I will certainly keep the old one for posterity, but soon I will be traveling without the one that has become such a terrific conversation starter. As one official once murmured when I explained that I travel as a writer, “Syria? Lebanon? Armenia? Brazil? In the movies, writers always seem to be spies.”

Nope. Not this time.

On the bright side? My new, clean passport will make the people standing in line or sitting in their cars behind me very, very happy.

* * *

Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," will be published July 16, 2013. You can it to your Goodreads "To Read" queue here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...

Vote early. Vote often. Buy a brownie.

This Tuesday it all comes to an end: The Presidential election cycle that kicked off with great fanfare about the same time that Ronald Reagan was playing George Armstrong Custer in the movie, “Santa Fe Trail.” Obviously I’m kidding. It only seems like President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney have been sparring since 1940. Actually, it wasn’t all that long ago that David Letterman’s and Jon Stewart’s lives were a lot easier, because they had Newt and Herman and Rick and Michele and another Rick battling Mitt. Nothing says late night comedy better than a Presidential candidate who has absolutely no idea how many justices sit on the Supreme Court – except, maybe, Donald Trump’s hair. (Just for the record, Donald Trump’s hair never officially ran for President. There was some issue with whether it was made in the U.S.A.) Ah, memories. Now that was great TV.

In any case, this Tuesday we vote. Finally.

The first time I voted in a Presidential election was 1980. And while my guy didn’t win, it was still a heady experience. And, the fact remains, voting hasn’t lost any of its luster. There are many things in this country I take for granted, but voting will never be among them.

Earlier this year, I was in Yerevan, Armenia, and I happened to be there on election day. The fellow showing me around was a friend of a friend, an ambitious and hardworking auto parts entrepreneur named Movses Babayan. Mid-afternoon on our second day together, we went to the elementary school near where he lives so he could vote. I stood in line with him as he signed in and presented an i.d., and then waited as he went to a card table with a three-sided cardboard curtain perhaps two feet high, behind which he could use a pencil and draw X’s on a paper ballot.

When he was done, I sensed he was a riot of emotions: On the one hand, voting to him was profoundly important – and he wanted the voting to be free of corruption. After all, he had been born in Armenia when it was still a part of the communist Soviet Union. Armenia has been an independent, democratic nation for only twenty-one years. On the other hand, Movses was ashamed at how primitive the voting procedure might seem to me – a guest from the United States.

“We use pencils and paper,” he said to me, shaking his head.

“That’s how I vote in Vermont,” I reassured him.

At first, he didn’t believe me. And so I described for him precisely how I vote here in Lincoln. “I wander to the dining room in Burnham Hall,” I said. “It’s across the street from the village’s general store. I state my name to people who’ve known me a quarter-century now, and they hand me the paper ballot. Then I go behind a curtain where there’s a wooden shelf and a wooden pencil. Just like you, I mark my X’s. Then I fold the paper, emerge from behind the curtain, and slip the paper into a metal box with a slot. When I’m done, I buy a homemade brownie from the bake sale. There’s always a bake sale.”

He presumed everyone in America used a modern voting booth. I told him no. I considered telling him that the modern voting booth might be overrated, and regaling him with terms like “hanging” and “pregnant chads.” Instead I simply reminded him of something he understood better than I: Voting is a privilege and a responsibility and an honor. It doesn’t matter how we vote – whether we use a digital kiosk or we stand behind a cardboard curtain with a pencil. All that matters is that we do vote.

This Tuesday is a symbol of how fortunate we are. If you happen to be that one person left in the nation who is still undecided, be sure and do your homework on the candidates. Then, on Tuesday, take your responsibility seriously. Don’t vote for Donald Trump’s hair. It couldn’t possibly have been made in America.

* * *

This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 4, 2012. Chris's most recent novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," is a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Award in Historical Fiction. You can vote here:

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...

It's that time of the year: "Dancing with the Stars" goes literary

I am so grateful to see that “The Sandcastle Girls” is a finalist for the Goodreads "Readers’ Choice Award" in Historical Fiction.

Whether it moves to the next round is up to you.

Truly. You vote.

Here is the link to vote for the novel if you would like to see it move forward in the competition. (NO pressure -- I mean that!)

To vote, follow this link:

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards...

Again, a thousand thanks. I mean that.

Even Halloween has a dress (up) code -- and, in case you missed it, who Honey Boo Boo endorsed for President

This Wednesday night is Halloween, that day of the year when mailboxes everywhere quiver with fright, and self-respecting adults think it makes sense to dress up as Snooki Polizzi from “Jersey Shore.”

This year also boasts a Presidential election, which means we’ll see a lot of people costumed as William Howard Taft. Kidding, of course. If you’re going to be a morbidly obese Republican with no neck, you’re going to dress up as Newt Gingrich. If you’re going to be a morbidly obese Democrat, you’ll dress up as Honey Boo Boo’s Mom. (Okay, that’s two Honey Boo Boo references in a month. I will now swear off any allusions to the reality TV show for the rest of the year. Also, just for the record, I have no idea if Honey Boo Boo’s mom is a Democrat. Yes, Honey Boo Boo endorsed President Obama on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, but her mom didn’t weigh in. For all I know, the only time Mom votes is when “American Idol” needs to send someone home.)

I asked friends on Facebook to share with me costumes they created that either were tragically unappreciated or, in hindsight, the Godzilla monsters of bad ideas. Here are some of their responses.

• Barbara Gaudreau: “Last year I went as a pig in a blanket. I wore a pig nose and wrapped a blanket around me. No one got it!”

• Teresa Burns Gunther: “My mother dressed me as Saint Teresa in brown robes and a veil, my hair hidden under a wimple. I carried a crucifix and roses to complete the outfit, and thus had no way to carry a bag to collect candy. My mother consoled me with the knowledge that I was a beacon to the heathen crowds on Halloween night.”

• Liz Grimes: “My best costume was blowing up a bunch of purple balloons and being a bunch of grapes. It was also kind of a failure, because going to the bathroom was a major challenge.”

• Amy Feld: “I finished chemo for breast cancer and went to a party (filled with people without a sense of humor) as Chemo Barbie. I got some props from my oncologist (who thought the costume was brilliant) and used an air conditioner stand as the IV-stand.”

• Cherie Tinker: “When I was in fifth grade, I forgot to tell my parents that we needed costumes for school, and so I ended up making my own. I wore a long pioneer-looking dress and let my hair down. I told everyone that I was Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child. No one got it.”

• Ginny Frye: “Years ago, my husband Mike taught at a technical college in Ohio. At the faculty Halloween party, we went as ‘male’ and ‘female’ electrical plugs. We made them out of huge boxes that covered us from our heads to our thighs. Mike's had the prongs, complete with the ground prong, which was made from a paper towel core. Mine, the female plug, had appropriately placed holes for the prongs. We could plug the costumes together, which we did. To this day, it embarrasses me to think about it.”

• Gale Deitch: “When my daughter was in sixth grade, she and her best friend decided to be a two-headed monster. They cut two holes in a sheet for their heads and donned matching monster masks. The problem? As they ran through the neighborhood, they had to stay together as one and they kept tripping over the sheet. But they sure looked cool when you opened the door.

• Bonnie Mark Monahan: “My husband once went to a costume party as Vegas Elvis. His confidence was crushed when someone thought he was the superhero, Shazam.”

• Juliet Smith: “Last year I went to a party wearing a blue dress, accessorized with a rubber chicken, power cord necklace. I was chicken-cord-on-blue. My friends and neighbors did not get my sense of humor and were not amused.”

Inspired? I hope so. Time to assemble your UNICEF cartons and track down your rubber chickens. Halloween is almost here.

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris's most recent novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," was published in July.)

Animal Planet? Visit Vermont after dark.

Thursday evening I gave a speech in Worcester, Massachusetts, and drove home to Lincoln, Vermont when I was finished speaking. I did this because I’m a wild and crazy thrill-seeker and there is nothing more energizing than being pumped up on eleven Sugar Free Red Bulls and driving between Randolph, Vermont and Lincoln in the middle of the night.

I am, of course, exaggerating the number of Sugar Free Red Bulls I consumed: I only had five. And that was over the course of the entire day. Still, I had polished off 42 ounces of the juice between six a.m., when I awoke, and two in the morning, when I arrived home in Lincoln. I probably looked like I’d been cooking meth.

Now, I am not telling you this because I want to promote caffeine-laced energy drinks. Trust me, I’m not proud of the fact that I share anything with Honey Boo Boo or her mom. (For those of you with lives, Honey Boo Boo is the child star and beauty pageant participant in a reality TV show called “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” Earlier this year, Honey Boo Boo’s mother told “Good Morning America” that she gets her daughter pumped for the pageants with something she calls “Go Go Juice:” Red Bull and Mountain Dew.)

Nor do I want to advertise my spectacular bad judgment. Let’s face it, no one with good judgment embarks on a four-plus hour drive at 10 at night, even if he has a Yankees playoff game, a Steelers football game, and a Vice Presidential debate to listen to. Yeah, I was seriously channel-surfing as I drove. The baseball game, you’ll recall, lasted 13 innings. There were times when I thought I would be home before the last pitch was thrown.

I am telling you this because in my last hour behind the wheel, I saw a deer, a fox, and a moose. I didn’t see another car on the road in Vermont once I left the village of Randolph, but I enjoyed the trifecta of animal sightings. (Note that I did not use the usual verb that precedes “trifecta.” I did not “hit” any of those animals.) It was glorious and reminded me of why I love living here.

I saw the deer standing by the side of the road, perhaps five miles north of Randolph on Vermont Route 12A. The moose was crossing the flats somewhere south of Roxbury. And the fox raced into the brush as I was descending the western side of the Lincoln Gap. None of them seemed especially alarmed to see a vehicle in the small hours of the morning. The deer and the fox indeed raced away from the road as I neared, but the moose took his sweet time crossing the asphalt. I’ve seen moose before when I’m driving, most frequently on the stretch of Route 125 just east of Bread Loaf in Ripton or on the Lincoln Gap, but their size still leaves me a little awed.

When I grew up in suburbs in New York, Connecticut, and Florida, I didn’t see a whole lot of wildlife other than birds. Supposedly there were alligators in the canal across the street from my family’s house in Miami, but I never saw one. The closest I came to wildlife there might have been the palmetto bugs we had in the kitchen: Imagine a cockroach that flies and is, oh by the way, the size of a poodle.

Consequently, even though I have lived in Vermont a quarter century, I am still excited by the way, on occasion, we can spot the natural world. It’s one of the gifts of living where we do, and I hope I never take that for granted. Sometimes, you just have to pop open a Red Bull – or track down a cup of coffee – and be on the road for home after midnight.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 14, 2012. Chris's most recent novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," was published in July.)