Big Sky country

About a week ago, John & I went canoeing on the Otter Creek between Brandon and Whiting. We needed to leave a car along the creek in Whiting at our pull-out spot. To get there we headed west from Route 7 in Leicester toward the Valley of Vermont. There actually is a part of Vermont so named. About a mile in after leaving Route 7, the landscape was transformed. The hills, and valleys and trees that define most of Vermont fell away. All of a sudden in felt like we are on the great plains of the west, the land of the Big Sky country. I was taken back to My Antonia by Willa Cather, probably the best book I ever read.