Merck Forest to this day still holds a deep emotional connection for me. It is a place that is completely synonymous in my memory with our family at that time in our lives together, and which in so many ways reflects mom and dad’s values and beliefs about what was important in life. It conjures up feelings of adventure and excitement, and calm easy-free days where you felt like you knew your place in the world. It was a retreat, where we could connect with nature and with each other without distraction; a place where we always had lots to do but absolutely nothing to worry about. Merck was a special place for us, and still is.

Chris places the year of our first trip to Merck as 1977 and that may be right. At least it sounds reasonable because I don’t clearly remember ever not going during those years. I don’t exactly remember when we stopped either. What I can say with confidence is that this was by far our most frequent and consistent family vacation. We went pretty much every summer, did pretty much the same things each time, and it never really got old.

It was not an easy vacation in terms of preparation. Only now as a parent of two myself do I realize how much effort it must have taken mom and dad to get us in position for this trip each year. But they had it down. Mom was most certainly the organizer and planner. I’m not sure the trip could ever have gotten off the ground without her many, very detailed lists/itineraries and unstoppable drive to get things done. She always enjoyed a good organizational challenge to tackle and she was extraordinarily good at it. But dad had a large role to play as well–sometimes just as sherpa and chief fire maker–but on a deeper level also as an unknowing spiritual leader and driver for the perennial nature of the trip. I think he felt at home at Merck and free to be who he was and what he wanted. In the end, after all the effort, it was a quiet and solitary trip and that suited him.

This was a legitimate trip into the woods. No phones, no electricity, no bathroom, no running water. Everything we needed had to be packed in on our backs, a little more than a mile up the hill to our campsite. Most of the time we would stay in a campground called Spruce, which in the early years had a lean-to structure that was later closed in to make a cabin. It kept us dry on rainy days and it had a wood burning stove, but otherwise it was pretty bare. I remember vividly the unnerving scamper of critters around the cabin at night, and the hammock we would hang from a beam in the middle to keep our food safe from unwanted scavenging. We would keep our perishable items in a cistern maybe 20 or 30 yards up the hill from the cabin, which had continuously running cold spring water. We would hand carry water from the cistern to the cabin in water carriers, which we would hang from a nail on the side of the cabin for drinking, washing hands, and doing dishes. Occasionally we would fill our Sun Shower bag and lay it on the grass during the day to collect heat from the sun for a civilized shower…but it never worked that well and often we wouldn’t bother.

More frequently, our baths were swims at Birch Pond. It was maybe a mile walk at most down a hill from the cabin and we went most days that the sun shined, making it one of my fondest memories of going to Merck. In the earlier years there was a cool rope swing from a large tree at the side of the pond, where we climbed, swung, and released ourselves out over the water many times. There was always a dock at the head of the pond as well, where we could run and jump into the water. The many retrievers we had over the years loved going to Birch, running from the dock and bounding into the water to retrieve a stick we had thrown for them, procured from one of the trees by the pond or on the walk down. The little dogs, and I can remember Jenny in particular, would yap at the side of the pond…and eventually get thrown in from the dock by me, Chris, or mom. Incidentally, I never remember dad doing it, which is amuses me–this sort of foolery was not so much his style. Their little paws would fire away high out of the water as if they were trying to climb out, but eventually they would right themselves and cruise into shore.

The dogs were an important part of our family over the years and Merck was a vacation for them as well. We had as many as four dogs with us on our trips, which was quite a trick considering everything that needed to be packed into the car. But we made it work. Sometime very early on mom sewed a backpack for the bigger dogs so that they could pack in their own food. It looked kind of like saddle bags strapped under their waste and around their chest. Mom was of course very good at engineering and creating things of all kinds, and I think she she mostly enjoyed the fact that she was able to create this ingenious solution, more so than it actually helped relieve the packing burden. I’m sure she also felt good knowing that her four-legged family members pitched in and did their part.

We made fires, every night, which was a job primarily covered by dad–there were pine trees near the cabin, with loads of small dry branches, which we would collect as kindling to start the fire. Dad had a saw he would carry in for the slightly bigger stuff, and their was typically a stack of wood by the cabin as well.   When the fire got going, we would find sticks for s’mores and sit around together waiting for the stars to come out. When the night was clear, the stars were incredible. That sense of awe and wonderment of the universe, central to my personal spirituality (and in many ways very different from my parents’), I believe first traces back to those nights out by the fire staring up at the fog of stars in the pitch black night sky.

Occasionally we would would hike out for the day and drive into Manchester, VT. This was mostly driven by my mom. She loved going to Adams woodworkers and the various outlet stores in the area for whatever hot sale she could find. Not surprisingly, she also took a liking (as did we) to a little sweet shop called Mother Myrick’s, which had really great ice cream sundaes. On some of those outings we would also head to Bromley mountain to ride the alpine slide. I loved that…and would always try to rally for it. One year as we got older (and taller), Chris skinned his pointy knees and that was pretty much the end of it.

More than anything, the annual trip was about us being together, and it was quiet. Yes, we loved the adventure of it and the connection with nature–the rewarding feeling from a hard days work packing in and setting up. But I think what my parents loved most was the simple, undivided time where we could be together. I appreciate that much more now than I ever did then. They would usually schedule it toward the end of the summer as a last respite before the busy school year started. We played cards, read, whittled, made walking sticks, went on hikes, went swimming, played frisbee in the field, played with our dogs, and just hung out together. The Spruce Cabin sat alone looking out over a glorious alpine field surrounded by hillsides which would echo back at us when we called. And there was nobody and nothing for miles around, literally. We could go days without seeing a sole. It was complete silence. Just us, together.