All the photos and features from the winter issue of Stratton Magazine are now available on line. Featuring the photography of Hubert Schriebl, this award-winning magazine has showcased the Southern Vermont region, its people, sporting tradition and its unique lifestyle for more than 45 years.
Experience the new digital format of Stratton Magazine. » read more
By Geoffrey Norman
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
It was January and cold the way it can get when a big high pressure system parks itself over New England for three or four days. The temperature never got much above ten degrees in the middle of the day and it dropped like a stone when the sun went down. By two or three in the morning, it was twenty below and still falling. There was no cloud cover and no wind, so there was a kind of epic stillness to the air. At night, the sky was crowded with stars and they seemed unusually close.
I'd taken a late afternoon walk, on snowshoes, and was telling a friend about it.
"You know," I said, ponderously, "there is something different about the woods in winter."
"Could it be they're colder?" my friend said.
"So that's it." » read more
By Susanne Washburn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
Tradition, in many different guises, is of genuine moment to this pair. Elizabeth and Thomas Torak, husband-and-wife artists, make their home in Pawlet, which, like much of Vermont, has a long lineage of painters. Itinerant portraitists and stencilers of the early and mid-1800s were the first. Toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, the area acquired something of an art-colony reputation as visiting painters drew their peers from afar to (literally) greener pastures. In the latter 20th century, the Toraks' home territory lay claim to luminaries like Ogden Pleissner, celebrant of outdoor sporting scenes, and Jay Connaway, creator of large Vermont landscapes.
On their Pawlet hilltop endlessly redecorated by its sky dome, the Toraks have a handsome shake-roof home, built in 1985, which now incorporates separate, adjoining studios-both north-lit from on high. There, each painter labors, sometimes meets with classes and, more unusually, prepares paints and canvases with methods that originated with Jan van Eyck in the 15th century and achieved their apex with Peter Paul Rubens in the 17th. » read more
Emo Henrich 1922-2009
By Kimet Hand
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
Emo Henrich, longtime beloved Ski School Director at Stratton Mountain, died on May 3rd in Igls, Austria surrounded by his loving wife Ann, and his two daughters Mercedes "Benzi" and Tini. Born in Innsbruck, Austria on November 30, 1922 and extremely proud of his Austrian heritage, Emo shared it with thousands of skiers and visitors to Stratton over his 26 years as director of both the Ski School and the Stratton Mountain Boys, a musical group he founded.
A legend in the ski world, Emo came to the United States in the late fifties to teach skiing in California, but relocated to Vermont in 1961 at the request of Stratton founder Frank Snyder. There, Emo directed the Ski School and Annedore managed their cozy and popular ski lodge, The Birkenhaus.
Emo taught thousands of eager skiers by day and at night entertained après ski and for the weekly Tyrolean Evenings, singing, playing guitar, yodeling and dancing the Austrian schuhplatner in Stratton's base lodge.
He had a passion for mountain climbing around the world, often joined by his good friend, Stratton photographer, Hubert Schriebl. They, along a with close circle of Stratton friends, took nighttime hikes up Stratton Mountain, often staying overnight in a snow cave fashioned by Emo's hands, enjoying his songs, some wine and cheese and the camaraderie that came from climbing together. » read more
By Louise Jones
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
At Manchester Music Festival, Ari & Joana Rudiakov are carrying on the family message and mission.
Music is created by people-regular folks who pay the bills, mow the lawn, brush their teeth and yet somehow never stop yearning for those things that are beautiful and inspired. That's why music transcends time and place; it moves through generations and connects across countries and cultures. And it's also why Ariel Rudiakov and his wife, Joana Genova-Rudiakov, are able to make a passable living, raise their two children and create extraordinary classical music in a small town in southern Vermont.
As artistic director of the Manchester Music Festival (MMF), Ari now carries on the work of his father, Michael, who held the same position from 1985 until his death in November 2000. The tradition also has passed to Joana from Judy Rudiakov, Ari's mother and Michael's widow. Each in their time, both women came to share equally in the hard work of managing the festival and in carrying out its mission. » read more
By Peggy Shinn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
I first made the leap from 200-centimeter-long Fischer straight-as-an-arrow giant slalom skis to a pair with more sidecut-hourglass-shaped skis-in November 1998. Like many of us who have skied for decades, I was reluctant to make the switch. Shaped skis, with their wide tips and tails, looked like something Bugs Bunny or Sylvester the Cat would ski on. They weren't for real skiers.
On that gray November day a decade ago, I tentatively took to the slopes on a pair of borrowed K2 Fours-the ski model credited with popularizing shaped skis in the United States after an unknown brash teenager named Bode Miller clicked into the skis and took three firsts and a second at the 1996 National Junior Championships (two weeks later, he finished third in slalom at senior nationals and made the U.S. Ski Team). » read more
When I first moved to Vermont-more years ago than I like to think about-it was late October and the last of the leaves were grimly hanging on. The nights were cold and there would be a layer of frost on the ground when I woke up. You could feel winter coming. » read more
By Geoffrey Norman
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
There is a particular ridge that straddles the border between New York and Vermont where I find myself spending a fair amount of time in the fall, hunting for grouse and woodcock. Everything lives on this ridge-deer, turkeys, moose, bear and all manner of smaller animals. There is good cover with plenty of water and food. Lots of berries and gnarly old apples growing on the trees in an old, gone-by orchard that is still hanging on. And more nuts than I've seen anywhere in Vermont. The butternut trees grow down at the base of the ridge, along the bank of a small stream. Higher up, there is a stand of shagbark hickory.
As often as I have walked under those trees, I've picked up fewer than a dozen hickory nuts to stick in my vest pocket and inexpertly smash with a hammer when I get home. For a long time, I thought it was the squirrels that had beaten me to the hickory nuts. They have to make a living in the woods, after all, and I'm just out there for recreation. So they get out earlier than I do.
But the squirrels do have a human competitor for those hickory nuts. For a long time, I didn't know this. Then, one day when I was hunting the ridge with a friend, we walked through that stand of hickory trees and, as usual, there wasn't a single nut anywhere on the ground.
» read more
