Most residents of Addison would forgive a visitor for leaving their hometown
with the impression that there isn't much there. There isn't much -- if
all you count are consumer opportunities. But the lake views are superb.
And at Chimney Point on Lake Champlain a bridge will take you to New York.
The town, a half-dozen miles northwest of Middlebury, is a fairly flat
expanse of farms, woodlands and an enormous central wetland area called
Dead Creek. Stop into the general store at the juncture of Vermont 22A
and 17 and, if it's that time of year when the frost is on the pumpkin,
ask for directions to the fields of geese. Every October, with precision
timing that no airline has ever matched, the corn-stubble fields along
Vermont 17 serve as a landing pad for about 20,000 snow geese making their
way south along the Champlain Valley Flyway to the Carolinas. It's an
annual miracle worth planning a trip around.
