Almost home.

For years, two whale tails sticking out of a Vermont field meant I was almost home.

I lived in Burlington for a decade, and Lake Champlain was my everything. Being near the water brought me peace and helped ease my anxiety. I could look out over the lake and feel a little more room inside myself. That kind of comfort stays with you.

My friends were just as much a part of what made it home. When I think about Burlington, the people and the place come together: the friendships, the lake, the feeling of belonging to a community. It is a community like no other I’ve known, surrounded by a beauty I still miss.

That is what the whale tails were welcoming me back to. There they were beside I-89, familiar and wonderfully improbable. I couldn’t tell you how many times I passed them over those years. I can tell you what seeing them meant: nearly there. Back to the lake, my friends, my life.

They are technically in South Burlington, but to me they belong to that feeling of arriving in Burlington. Two enormous whale tails in the grass. In Vermont. Of course.

They are so perfectly Burlington: art out in the open, a little oddness, a love of the natural world, and something worth looking at on an otherwise ordinary drive. I love that they manage to be both a surprise and an old friend.

Now home is in Massachusetts. Getting back to Vermont takes a little more doing, and being able to make that trek with James means a great deal to me. There is something wonderful about bringing your child to a place that already holds years of your life. You arrive with all those memories, and then you get to add him.

That is what I see in this photograph. James on the green path, smiling, with tall grasses on either side and the whale tails up behind him. All that blue sky. A place I have carried around in my mind, with my son right there in the middle of it.

For so long, the tails were something I passed on my way home. Getting out and walking toward them with James made them a destination in their own right. I love having a photograph of that. When I think of the whale tails now, I get to think of this day, too.

The sculpture has a proper name: Reverence. Jim Sardonis created it in 1989, carving the tails from African black granite. They spent their first ten years in Randolph before moving to South Burlington in 1999. At roughly 12 to 13 feet high, they have a presence that a passing glimpse from the highway doesn’t quite convey.^{1, 2}

And there really is a whale story beneath the Vermont landscape. The Champlain Valley was once occupied by the Champlain Sea. In 1849, railroad workers in nearby Charlotte uncovered the bones of a beluga whale. The University of Vermont tells the story of that discovery and the ancient sea that explains it.³ Whales in a Vermont field turn out to be a little less improbable than they first appear.

I appreciate that history. I appreciate the sculpture. But my attachment to those tails is also very simple: I saw them over the years, and they came to mean home.

Massachusetts is home now, too. Coming back with James lets those two parts of my life meet. I get to bring him into a place that gave me so much: friendship, beauty, and somewhere to find a little peace. I can be a visitor here and still feel the old recognition. There they are. I know this place.

And now I have this picture of James to add to all the years before it.