A buttery light tart filled with tomatoes, cheese and herbs. A light golden crepe folded around a filling of melted bittersweet chocolate and fresh homemade raspberry preserves. Crusty warm olive bread inviting buyers to break off a chunk and just eat. Jar upon jar of freshly made preserves (think strawberry, blueberry, red raspberry…). This is not your typical farmer’s market.

Every Friday afternoon in a field on a country road in Hardwick, Vermont, vendors arrive to set up their tents and tables for the afternoon’s sales. By 3 p.m., cars have filled the parking lot and spilled onto both sides of the road. This market more closely resembles a country fair.

The Hardwick Farmer’s Market, featuring local produce, products and services, has plenty to offer every taste. vendors market whatever fresh vegetables are ready for harvest : snap peas, lettuce, early corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes are just a few items to be found here (keep in mid that gardens are started much later and are subject to freeze much earlier this far in the Northeast).

A big, bold hand-painted roadside sign advertises the festive weekly sale which is the ultimate shopping delight for “locavores.” On this warm summer day, musicians kept up a lively country rhythm, providing entertainment and a respite for shoppers and their children.

My friend Robin and I and circled the sale area, beginning with a broad array of perennials, a severe temptation, given the massive landscaping job Robin is doing at her mountain home. Sold.

Vermont’s premier product, maple syrup, was showcased by Echo Hills Farm, which presented the delicate amber syrup in an assortment of sizes and unique containers, including glass “maple leaf” bottles. Sold.

A local baker was surrounded by a U-shaped table set-up, each surface covered with large wicker baskets full of fresh stone-oven baked bread in a wide variety of flavors. I bought a crusty loaf olive bread, of which only half made it home. At as much as $6.00 a loaf, it had to be good; in fact, it was mouthwatering great!

A local chef, dressed in baker’s cap and apron, offered the previously mentioned dessert crepe among the many delicacies she prepared for the day. We bought one, passing it back and forth between us since we had either my diabetes or our weight-watcher efforts in mind. Three bites each and the delicacy was gone. Shared, but gone. No, we didn’t save a bite for her teen-aged son.

Decisions, decisions...

Even holistic health practitioners join this festival, bringing a bit of alternative health care option to the table with a display of services and information available in the region. They are more than happy to discuss holistic health options and the value of complementary care.

This roadside gathering of laughing children, friends pausing to chat, and vendors discussing their products and recipes (many organic) gave a festive atmosphere to one of the finest outdoor markets I’ve visited. The Hardwick Farmer’s market is one of many such markets scattered about New England that have stepped beyond the ordinary to create a social occasion behind sale and service. Ultimately, though, the idea is to “Buy Local” and support the many farmers, gardeners, health practitioners and craftspeople who work in this Green Mountain region.

Vermont's finest: Maple syrup, courtesy of Echo Hill Farm

A country wedding. Low key, informal. Good friends and neighbors invited. Held at home with sprawling lawns edged with Green Mountain forest and a wonderful view.

Though my friend Robin has known the bride, Nettie, for a lifetime, I met Nettie as a undergraduate at Goddard College in the 1990s. She’s the kind of woman whose beauty is not just external but radiates from within; her spirit is radiant, warm, loving. The kind of person everyone should have for a friend. We all wanted her wedding to be special.

So, even as we faced the challenge and choices of what to bring to this pot luck country wedding, Robin spotted a TV ad for a bouquet of fresh fruits. Clever. Cute. Little sculpted flowers and such.

“We can do that,” Robin said.

“Of course we can,” I echoed.

Neither of are daunted by anything we undertake. We scaled Machu Picchu together, and we fished for pirrahna in the Amazon together. We ate roasted guinea pig in Cusco Peru. So local food is a piece of cake… and we like good food (as well as food that is not always good for us).

We found a giant coffee cup planter at a Job Lot store and bought a half-round of floral foam (which we wrapped in layers of saran) to set inside as an “anchor” for the skewers.

We headed to Price Chopper (my favorite Vermont supermarket if you have to hit a chain store). Three melons. two pints of blueberries. Two pints of red raspberries. A bag each of green and red seedless grapes. Two cans of pineapple. A bag of red leaf lettuce with curly edges to border the rim of the cup. Bamboo skewers.

The day before the wedding, we spent hours scouring the hillsides around Woodbury collecting two carloads of wild flowers, delivered to the bride’s home where an army of friends gathered to arrange them in small and large bouquets, one for every table, including the three under the food tents.

On the morning of the wedding, Robin and I drove down her driveway to the steep edge of a spring-fed pond. She set her kayak in the water (no details for public consumption here) to collect waterlilies to float in the stone edged pond where the wedding would be. The pond and marsh was a sea of pristine white blossoms with bold sun yellow centers. She gather blossoms, buds and lily pads under an overcast sky. The vines tangled on the shoreline bore a striking resemblance to poison ivy — which is why we were barefoot and standing in it; we collected two five gallon pails of waterlilies. We didn’t get poison ivy.

Back at the house it was time to clean up, dry off and start the fruit basket. With assembly line precision and periodic sampling to make sure the well chilled fruit was perfect, we opted to top each skewer with colorful raspberries, alternating between the deep reds of the berries and grapes, the pale green of grapes and kiwi, the rich melon tones of cantaloupe and honeydews, big bold strawberries, and the golden hue of chunked pineapple.

We began at the outer edge, filling in that layer with identical skwers; leaving the melons for the interior.

Though we hadn’t planned it that way, the colors of the oversized coffee cup/planter (12″ diameter on the cup, 12″ height), the fruit colors were a perfect match — by accident or kharma.

We also made a bucket of herb-roasted chicken salad with dried cherries and almonds as a side dish.

The fruit bowl was, in a word, spectacular. Beyond our expectations. We had gone in to this project with the resolution that if it didn’t work, the whole mess could be dumped in a bowl and labeled “fruit salad” after the two of us.

As an array of food found its way to the serving tables, so did our fruit bowl. The sun emerged, burning through overcast morning to warm the grounds just in time for the ceremony. As the afternoon heat settled in, the bride and groom exchanged their vows. Family and friends gathered at tables, eating, talking, laughing, and offering best wishes to two beautiful people.

The sun set, and we straggled away, satiated, and happy.

On the Road in America is an occasional and serendipitous column about people, places and observations, with publishing predicated on the random availability of internet access or lack thereof.

Being On the Road in America can sometimes be a bore.

Oh, there’s a great deal of beauty to be seen, from the Green Mountains of Vermont to the rolling farmlands across Ohio, from the rugged Rockies and the dramatic coastline of California’s 17-mile drive. That’s not the issue.

As implied in Josh Neuman’s Lemmings (right) ,what is troubling is the growing lack of identity, of uniqueness, of individuality, as one moves from state to state. North, south, east or west makes not a whit of difference. Commerce in America is cloning itself at breakneck pace, mass-producing blueprints for hotels, motels, box stores, shopping malls and restaurants that increasingly lack a sense of their own identity and certainly have no ties to community heritage or culture.

I’m on the road again, as Willie Nelson would sing, and I am heading for one of the few bastions of non-traditional development — via the central midwest to the rural northeast, home of green mountains, clothing optional backwoods beaches, interstate bike paths, and those perpetual golden arches relegated to the outermost borders of some cities.

The “Main Street” of Norman Rockwell fame in Stockbridge MA (Pine is the cross street). Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk

Travelers seeking “something different” often have to search out small little “Main Streets” in small little cities and towns, taking that “road less traveled” literally, if they hope to find any sense of the individuality that America was once famous for. Yes, Norman Rockwell’s Main Street in Stockbridge remains essentially the same — I’ve had mulled cider at the Red Lion Inn there many times, and sat beside their fireplace with its chain of antique keys hanging from the mantle. Some small towns retain and cultivate their Main Streets specifically to draw in tourists and travelers with unique architecture and themes that either reflect their history or re-create themselves as a new destination, as a place people WANT to be. Paducah, Kentucky, just a few hours from Clarksville, has done this, and done it well, redefining itself and its development with art. Yet today, in most cases, moving from point to point across America is to journey through a litter of mass produced economy.

Day by day, America’s unique local vistas are being enveloped in rubber-stamped malls with the same rubber-stamped stores: JC Penney’s, Sears, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Best Buy, Avenue, Gap (and Baby Gap), Macy’s, Kohl’s, Fashion Bug, Foot Locker, and such. It’s not just the Smiths keeping up with the Jone’s anymore; we can’t tell the Smiths from the Joneses.

Not that you can’t find good merchandise or big sales in these stores; bulk buying and and blockbuster sales can produce great deals. It is the lack of uniqueness, the absence of originality and creativity, that quickly becomes boring. This lack of diversity in the cloning of America converts shoppers into clones of one another. My own take on this: if everybody has it, I don’t want it.

It’s the same with eateries; McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway (I do favor Subway), and Arby’s are epidemic. Applebees, Cracker Barrel, Pizza Hut, Ruby Tuesday, Chicago Pizza, Pizzaria Uno and others in a slightly higher price range are everywhere. When I travel, I don’t opt for a sure thing — I know what I have had. If I wanted more of the same I could stay home.

I deliberately seek out the non-chains, the mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall places where the locals eat, a long narrow diner, or a small country inn with unique menus and local foods. It’s why I’ve bought lobsters directly off the boat on Cape Cod, savored deep fried wild turkey tenders, Moose steak, caught my own 23 pound catfish on Lake Champlain, mulled over the taste of venison in a hunter’s stew in northern New England, and savored clam chowder on (again) Cape Cod.

It’s why I like those funky purple potatoes that now grow abundantly in Maine (I first tried them in the Andes of Peru), and the taste of Hadley (MA) asparagus fresh picked from the field. And then there is French Onion soup dressed with fresh apples, or sea scallops on the pier in Monterey Bay (CA). Or chunks of cheddar cheese cut off huge aged rounds (at the Granville Country Store in the Berkshires) as I watch.

Besides grabbing some locally grown fresh fruit for the road, Atkins Fruit Farm also has home-baked goods such as warm Apple Cider Donuts, pure Maple Syrup, and a selection of goodies from regional farms. (Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk.

Loca’Vore (commonly spelled “localvore”) is the Oxford University word of the year, a term coined in San Francisco that defines a commitment to consuming only foods grown within a hundred miles radius. Now that easier to achieve in some parts of the country than others, but where there is an abundance of local produce (including jams, jellies, breads, cheeses, meats) it is a also a strategy for supporting local growers and farmers in a local economy. The products used are always unique to the region. It’s what I look for wherever and whenever I travel. Long trips, regional trips, or just ambling around town.

As for chain hotels and motels, they assure a fairly certain standard of comfort, and for those who need that kind of security or standardization, by all means be their guest…but checking into Red Roof Inn is not half as much fun as walking through a small Canadian village pool hall, paying ten dollars for a third floor walk up room (upstairs from that French-speaking pool hall/country store/post office/feed store) — a fine old room with a bath down the hall, latched but not locked doors, handmade rag rugs, feather quilts and pillows on a an old iron bed and a view of the St. Lawrence River from my window. It is not the same as finding that little cluster of cottages with a lake view to the east and a mountain view to the west and home-cooked community meals with fellow fishermen on the great lakes. It’s not as good an seaside inn on the California coast. Or a rooming house in old Quebec City. Or any small locally owned motel or bed and breakfast.

Along America’s highways, the view is increasingly the same: Motel 6, Red Roof Inn, Hometown Suites, Holiday Inn (not from the Bing Crosby musical), Hyatt, … you get the idea. Get out that rubber stamp.

I see these cloned hotels, malls and eateries as dots on the corporate maps, bottom lines on the corporate profit statements, a push toward standardization that saps individuality from the highways and main streets of America communities, funneling the competition of small business into oblivion.

Don’t “reach out.” Hang up!

It’s hard for some people to get a handle on traveling without a cell phone, not having access to internet, not being connected. It’s hard for some to get a handle on not accessing “the familiar,” not constantly being able to “reach out and touch someone.” It’s hard for some to step back from the manic pace of modern living, to turn off the music and the television and simply be, or be silent. It’s hard for some to turn the key to a hotel or hostel or cabin door and commit themselves the unfamiliar. It’s hard for some to imagine the night without a backlit afterglow of streep lamps, to imagine that the only light on a moonless night comes from the stars, that there is such a thing as “nightblack” — a completely black night.

These cloned corporate chains, this connectedness to technology, this fierce need to be bigger, faster, better, and perpetually linked are ties that bind us to work and home, precluding the kind of getaways in which we really “get away.” It isolates us, and keeps us from experiencing something new. Something different. It keeps us from knowing ourselves, and getting to know the people in other parts of our world.

As I move about the country, I become increasingly determined (moving quickly into adamant) to skip the mainstream, refuse the redundant, and seek out those places and people I don’t know yet … but want to meet. I want to slow down long enough to experience the heritage, the local color and culture,the values, the texture and taste of community. No spoon-fed culture, thanks. I like that “road less traveled.”

We cannot and probably should not always retain or re-create yesterday’s atmosphere exactly as it was. We can take the best of our history, or traditions, our cultural quirks and with careful planning redefine them in a way that anchors us to our heritage and history while moving us forward. That heritage is what gives our cities and towns solidity, and a “destination”stamp that actually means something.

As I prepare to board the bus for my semi-annual sojourn north, ready to be “On the Road in America,” I am thinking of all the roadblocks thrust before me as I was pulling the jigsaw pieces of my itinerary puzzle together. Starting with the travel plans…

To begin with, there is no easy way to get where I am going from Tennessee. Take Amtrak and you have to navigate to Indianapolis first. Flying means not only getting to Nashville but landing in Hartford, navigating to a bus terminal and — taking the bus for hours and hours more. Or tripling the airfare to land in Burlington and — get to the bus station or train station and take a train. I’ve since resolved to take the scenic routes by Greyhound, which has, until this trip, been both flawless and economical. And scenic.

To begin with, I’ve been enjoying the 14-day advance purchase for my tickets for years. Apparently that particular and very appealing price option was discontinued on June 3. Okay. I was not happy about that, since I subscribe to Greyhound Rewards and never got a notice about this change. Neither did it show up on June 17 when I cruised their website double-checking prices and schedules. So I opted to buy a discounted 7-day advance purchase ticket. Yeah, right. Since buying online tickets involves surcharges that add up, I went to the Clarksville Greyhound Terminal, as I always do, to buy my ticket.

A very young person working behind the counter informed me that she couldn’t sell me a ticket because my destination, the first stop on my journey, Montpelier, did not exist. I spelled out and re-spelled the name of the city, even as she kept telling me all she could find was Mt. Mansfield (near the ski areas of Stowe) which proved Vermont and Greyhound did exist — somewhere in the Green Mountain State. Given that Montpelier is the state capitol, and the microscopic riverside trailer that serves as a terminal is a place I have been through dozens of times each year for the past ten years, a terminal that also serves a steady stream of locals and college students, I seriously doubted that the stop had been eliminated. Besides, just a few hours earlier I had researched my route, layovers, prices etc. online and had the schedule, the route numbers and times to back me up. No go. This gal said as far as she was concerned, there was no Montpelier. I stormed out, tired and agitated by the new wrinkle in what should have been a simple, straightforward purchase. I give you money. You give me a bus ticket. How hard can it be?

Irate, ticked off, and frustrated, I went home and promptly called Greyhound’s 800 number, noting to a very pleasant online travel agent that I wanted to book my ticket at the station to take advantage of the 7-day advance purchase.

“Of course we stop in Montpelier,” she told me. But as we booked the trip I encountered a second element of frustration: apparently 7-day fares now only apply to trips of 800 miles or less. Instead of leaving me hanging, however, this agent worked out a schedule that enabled me to maximize my savings by splitting the travel in half: I bought two tickets , one for each half of the trip. It would still cost more to do this than the price I got online originally — which quoted a price of $77 for the 7-day advance purchase. It was too late to argue the difference, and I will still get there when I need to. Buying two tickets online would have doubled the fees and surcharges so I opted to go back to the terminal, with instructions from this agent to have the local counterperson call her if she still couldn’t find Vermont.

As I stood there in the somewhat dilapidated, outdated terminal, finally getting my turn at the counter, the same young woman looked up at me, immediately went to the back of the office, and sent out a much older (read: experienced) agent who promptly found Montpelier with no extra effort, issued my two tickets. My passage to Vermont was ensured.

FYI: Like the airlines, Greyhound is taking up the slack over escalating fuel prices shifting the fares and by allowing only one free ‘under coach’ bag; a second bag costs $5.00 (still not a bad deal). Three bags per customer under the Coach means those bags will travel as freight, not luggage: I assume that means your excess luggage will get there “eventually.”

Having traveled by Greyhound for ten years, I have always bragged about the good deals. I often brag about it in print, since I write a chunk of my “On the Road in America” columns during the course of these bus trips. I meet people, talk to people, listen to people, observe people. I scour out the details, the minutia that is too easily overlooked by so many. I find stories everywhere, though I haven’t had to vent dissatisfaction over Greyhound service in nearly 40 years.

I haven’t had any major issues since one horrendous trip to Canada in the 1960s (another story). I’ve watched them neatly order five additional buses in the post-9-11 “afraid to fly” era when 200+ customers were waiting for a single bus. They coped, beautiful, with minimal delays, shifts in schedules with drivers who deftly made up for the delay. Smooth, seamless operation, that was. I’ve watched drivers settle two elderly people with “hearing dogs” aboard without blinking. Kind and courteous. I’ve noted the amenities of additional plugs in most terminals allowing customers to recharge cell phones and laptops.

I traveled Greyhound because of the ability to buy discounted fares and because they have affordably gotten me where I need to be, when I need to be there. Given the probabilities, or should I say inevitability, of further fuel hikes, the probability of discontinuing the advance purchase discounts looms large. If that happens, I will have to search out alternatives through online discounters for all forms of transit (planes/trains/buses), or possibly carpool with other Tennessee or southern state students to get there.

I am not a hard person to please; I live and work simply. But I expect things to work and I expect a certain level of professionalism from the people I deal with in business, particularly in customer service. This time, Greyhound fell flat, generating stress and triggering unnecessary aggravation. I was not the proverbial “happy puppy.”

When I finally settled in at home, tickets safely tucked in my travel bag, I went to the kitchen for a tall cold glass of my home-made lemonade. I looked out the kitchen window to see the brilliant full moon shining down on me.