strangers in the parking lot

so yesterday i went to take out my trash and there was a couple sitting in the parking lot having lunch.

this is kind of weird, since i live in the middle of nowhere and i am twenty minutes from the nearest place where you can get a sandwich.

but i get a little closer and notice they have a delorme atlas with them.

i come up to them and i say "this is an odd place for lunch. can i bring you cake or something?"

and we get to talking and it turns out they are a little lost, but they are also not going anywhere in  particular. they just came out to see west bolton.

west bolton is one of my favorite things. when i was sixteen and i had my mom's car supposedly to do errands and other mom-approved stuff i used to blow out here as fast as i could, just to have come here. it's no accident i live here now.

turns out the guy had taken a vermont history course at the university and wanted to come out to look at west bolton on account of that.

oh! i said. they have a very nice collection of material on this place. did you see the picture looking out through the notch from the steps of the baptist church?

he said he had. he said that was one of his favorites from the collection.

do you want to know where you can find the old baptist church? the building is gone, but the steps are still there, so you can stand right where the picture was taken from.

his eyes lit up.

and we talked a little about west bolton, and the notch and the cellarholes up there and the apple trees that grow near the old farmsteads and it turns out this guy is almost as interested in feral apples as i am, so i run into the house and i fetch them a jar of apple jam i made last week from the apple tree down on the corner.

and they went off into the notch.

try to stay out of trouble, the woman said.

do strangers know me so well?