Boston and Vermont

I met a a guy at the GNI Gathering two years ago, who immediately became a friend. We had kept in contact throughout the year that followed and I was absolutely elated to see him upon my return to GNI the subsequent year. He lives in Boston with his partner, whom I had never met, and had purchased a vacation country home on Rock River in Vermont. Rock River is very popular gay swimming hole near Brattleboro Vermont. For about a year and a half now, he has been inviting me and the BF to visit them but somehow the time and season never seemed to work out.

So when he invited us once again a couple of months ago, I was determined to make it work. Getting to Brattleboro isn't the easiest thing to do since there is only one Amtrak train from here to there that leaves just once per day and takes 8.5 hours. We considered driving, but that too would take about the same time assuming no traffic. Good luck with that. So we decided to fly into Boston and spend part of Friday there before leaving to Vermont.

Once in Vermont, we spent late-afternoon Friday down on the river, which was stunningly beautiful and bucolic. We stopped at swimming hole #5 where we talked to some guys there that Steve knew and swam in the river. This was the last swimming hole and is mostly visited by gay men for naked lounging and swimming. On Saturday and Sunday we attended the naked massage workshop at Frog Meadow. Frog Meadow is a gay B&B, with a beautiful and large home, pond, hot tub and miles of hiking trails. Late that night we went to a gay-owned restaurant named Peter Havens in Brattleboro before sitting on the porch back at the house with a cocktail.

On Sunday, after the workshop, we headed back to the river where there were even more people than before, then later had dinner at a local tavern.

Before heading back on Monday, we bought local cheese, maple syrup and toured a couple of the local towns. All in all it was an absolutely wonderful weekend and I'm glad I got to meet my friend Steve's other half.

SIDE NOTE: Brattleboro was the site of a news story that I had read about last year. Basically, with their philosophy of "live and let live", Vermont is the only state (that I know of anyway) in which public nudity hasn't been made illegal. So last year a group of teenagers took to hanging out in the downtown area naked on weekends. The city legislature, determined to put a stop to this eventually passed a law that public nudity was illegal within the business district, which is actually a relatively small area. Even though I wish that they had not passed such a law, I think it speaks a lot about Vermonters that the law was as narrowly constrained as it was. Had this had taken place nearly anywhere else, public nudity would almost certainly had been legalized throughout the jurisdiction. Go Vermont!