You write about Vermont in the winter, now, because everyone writes about Vermont in the winter, and because it is winter, and because you are in Vermont. Everything encased in ice becomes a study, like a body in a bog with the last meal still discernible: the mountains in their purple haze, the people who mosey in their boots and gloves with bags of groceries, augers and fishing poles, children like down bundles in the snow. In the globe, everything is quiet. Sound can't get through the thick walls, and anything inside is muffled, insulated by the snow, which is moved from pile to pile with plows and shovels, around parking lots and sidewalks, so that the moseying people can get through. The funniest thing about snow globes is that you shake and shake the insides but nothing hits the walls -- not the people, not the shovels, not the children in their colorful coats. Everything quietly encased. And so everyone who writes about Vermont writes about Vermont in the winter. And you write about Vermont now, because here you are. Because the glass is thick. Because you shake and the only thing moving is the snow.