Stowzen in Time: Northern Vermont’s Winter Carnival Tradition

Alpine resorts in Europe are often seen as pilgrimage sites for city-dwellers in need of pure air and healthful pursuits. In the ski towns of New England, however, you pick up a more lighthearted vibe, in which a love of winter is a little nonsensical — but ever-present.  The season is frigid and the days are short, but visitors and residents alike head outdoors anyway to fly down mountainsides or huddle around holes in the ice.

In the northern Vermont town of Stowe (and the world-class Vail Resort of the same name), the locals never lose their streak of winter irony, no matter the temperature. This spirit perhaps shines brightest during the Stowe Winter Carnival, which will celebrate its 46th “Stowzen in Time” edition from January 23-26, 2020.

Stowe Winter Carnival

If you’ve never been, the SWC is a festival of ice-carving competitions, live-music dance parties, snow volleyball and golf competitions, a carnival for kids, and a general pub-crawl atmosphere. The Carnival dates back to 1921, even before downhill skiing became part of Stowe’s allure. Events like ski jumping and tobogganing on a modest local hill were the original draw, but by 1935, according to the town’s official history, the Carnival “included extremely competitive races in both alpine and cross-country skiing.”

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For locals like Sara Lory, marketing manager at Stowe’s prestigious Topnotch Resort, the event is a perennial highlight. “It’s part of the town’s winter tradition,” says Lory, whose lodge hosts one of the visiting ice carvers every year. “If you’ve been around Stowe or lived here for any number of years, inevitably you have a good Winter Carnival story to tell.”

Jamborees of this sort come together only with tireless organizing — and in Stowe, the organizer who never tires is Huntly Armbruster, who's been running the show since 1996. Ice carving seems to call for the most preparation, so Armbruster begins wrangling contestants months in advance, always with enthusiasm. “Stowe is a great competition for the top carvers, so we would show up there anyway,” says Jeff Blier, a chef and restaurateur from upstate New York who took first place last year. “But it still seems like the guys all go there to see Huntly.”

There are two opportunities for spectators to watch the ice carvers. On Friday, they’ll be spread throughout town doing demonstrations in front of more than 20 local businesses, including the local-favorite Von Trapp Brewery, which had its very own frosty tribute in 2018 (best paired with one of their classic lagers and crisp alpine views). Then on Saturday, the official competition begins to unfold at 11am with the professional three-hour timed contest and the two-hour amateur contest, followed by this year’s new “speed competition” at 3pm.

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For Saturday’s main events, ice-sculpting masters are welcomed to the landmark brewery and visitors center of The Alchemist, another renowned local craft brewery that produces the beloved Heady Topper and Focal Banger, along with some specialty brews. After the power saws growl and the ice chips fly, finished works go on display on the Alchemist Brewery grounds.  

“We’ve got a wonderful outdoor space that gives the artists plenty of room to work and spectators a great view of the competition,” says Hallie Picard, an Alchemist staff member. “…the event will have an amateur division, which I’m thinking will be quite interesting to watch — people with ice chainsaws who’ve maybe had one quick lesson in how to carve.” The brewery will host an amateur ice class on opening night — no pros allowed.

Of course, this art is of the impermanent sort — after all, none of it ends up in the lobby of an office building. “The second the judging is over, each piece is on its way to becoming a memory,” says Blier. “The sun hits your work and it starts to disappear in front of your eyes.” As for that judging, it is scrupulously official, administered by the National Ice Carving Association, a governing body that sets rules and standards.

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Other activities feel less like a winter tradition. Snow volleyball sounds like lunacy, but it plays very much like beach volleyball, and isn’t too different from the regulation game played in gymnasiums. When the all-day schedule of setting and spiking ends on Sunday, the awards ceremony morphs into a standard happy hour gathering.

Meanwhile, the Carnival’s golf tourney is a frozen (and somewhat futile) ode to the lush warmth of summer. Grooming machines rumble down from the ski slopes to cut “fairways” into the driving range of snow-covered Stowe Country Club, and each player carries one “club,” which can be a baseball bat, a hockey stick, or a regulation golf club. Scot Baraw of the family-owned Stoweflake Mountain Resort organizes the event and “designs” the course anew each year.

“It’s a distant cousin of real golf,” says Baraw. “But we do set up the course so there are par-3, par-4, and par-5 holes. The serious players compete in the Tiger Woods division, and the people who come out to drink beer make up our Lost in the Woods division.”

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Naturally the elements come into play — some years it snows, some years there’s a January thaw that makes the tournament a relatively balmy outing. “Events of all kinds are an important contributor to the success of this town, all four seasons of the year,” says Baraw. “Some of them are serious, others are more like snow golf.”

Whether you’re interested in witnessing time-honored traditions or zany takes on summer sports, the Stowe Winter Carnival offers a taste of the New England town’s vibrant wintry enthusiasm — and an opportunity to hit the slopes, too.

Tradewind offers scheduled shuttle flights to Stowe from mid-December through mid-March, as well as charter flights to Stowe year-round. To reserve a charter, call us at 1-800-376-7922 or click here. Learn more about the Stowe Winter Carnival and explore the schedule of events here.

Featured Photo: Mark Vandenberg

The Culinary Outposts of Northern Vermont

A featured story by David Gould, a renowned travel writer and former Executive Editor of Travel + Leisure Golf.

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You can stroll into most gourmet shops these days and purchase Himalayan pink salt blocks, mined in Pakistan from deposits more than 100 million years old. But in the late 1990s, when I was introduced to these epicurean wonders, they weren’t so well-known.  

The setting was a chef’s-kitchen dinner for a small group of food critics and travel writers in northern Vermont. Our host hand-grated some of his ultra-pure salt crystal for us, as the food critics smiled discreetly. From that night forward, I was aware that traveling due north in the Green Mountain State didn’t mean you were leaving civilization behind — not hardly.

Northern Vermont is something of an epicurean hotspot, with three main towns holding court as its culinary centers: Stowe, Burlington, and Middlebury (and their surrounding areas). Explore the best of each on a three-stop itinerary via Tradewind Aviation.

Fly into Stowe on a private charter or shuttle flight (resuming in December), and you’ll soon find yourself on a descent into Morrisville–Stowe State Airport, staring at the giant’s-face-in-profile view of Mt. Mansfield’s 4,300-foot peak, complete with its forehead, nose, lips and chin. May sound corny, but if you hike up there it’s likely you will use those features to navigate. 

Also out the aircraft window should be glimpses of Montreal, just 100 miles to the north and a steady source of prosperous, urbane tourists who know fine dining when they come upon it. Their influence, combined with the luxury vacation-home culture generated by Stowe and other ski resorts, generates considerable demand for cool things to see, do, and dine upon.

Photo: Plate

In the village of Stowe and down Route 100 at the eponymous resort, there’s no shortage of options for where to dine. Inside six-year-old Plate, on the village’s Main Street, you’ll find locals and visitors alike in comfortable booths of slate gray with polished wood trim under sparkly pendant lighting. The menu, atmosphere, and execution all adhere to lofty standards at Plate — presentation of the dishes is artistic, though never precious. There are small plates for the foodie who wants to sample and savor, but also generous portions of Curry Pork Loin or Jamaican Jerk Half Chicken, if you’re up for it. Reservations are suggested. 

The decor and branding of highly popular Doc Ponds may seem reminiscent of legendary local jam band Phish and the creative-slacker element found in any prominent ski town. But then you’ll consider how much discipline and devotion it takes to make an ambitious restaurant concept succeed the way this one has. A scan of the Doc Ponds menu shows comfort recipes wherever you look, but visually and gastronomically it’s a refined experience (don’t be surprised if post-graduate discussions of beer and how it’s produced arise).

Even during a tour of northern Vermont is by plane, the gondola ride up to the Cliff House Restaurant at Stowe Mountain Resort should still be a kick, and the wall of windows inside this chalet-style eatery offer breathtaking views of inspiring panoramas. Logically enough, the restaurant serves lunch only, except for the dinner opportunities afforded via a special Summit Series schedule of themed evenings.

Photo: Stowe Mountain Resort

A quick Tradewind flight over to Burlington International Airport is next, transferring you from an alpine backdrop to an urban one. As you approach the Champlain waterway, you’ll get a chance to discover, as I have, that the prairie-like parts of the state are as visually poignant as the mountainous regions.

It was here in greater Burlington, by the way, that I received my introduction to the dazzling pink salt block. That evening’s intimate dinner was hosted by a first-class hostelry now known as The Essex, Vermont's Culinary Resort & Spa. Conditions are right to make Burlington an outpost of the so-called “culinary vacation business,” and the location of The Essex next door to the prestigious New England Culinary Institute is emblematic of the collaborative energy that keeps the local foodie scene humming.

Hotel Vermont, with its plain-country name contradicting its chic sophistication, is an obvious choice for lodgings. The hotel’s bar and restaurant, Juniper, is visually appealing with its copper, hardwood, and gleaming glassware. There’s even an outdoor space with a fire pit and Adirondack chairs. Order the Lake Champlain Perch with frisée, malt vinegar, shallots and hazelnut oil. In the same neighborhood are two other top-rated Burlington restaurants, Hen of the Wood and Bleu Northeast Seafood. These three award-winners are mainstays of what’s considered the Cherry Street dining scene, and empty tables are rarely spotted up and down the boulevard.

Photo: Marshall Webb

The Inn at Shelburne Farms, the centerpiece of a 1,400-acre preserve along Lake Champlain, is a destination all its own. You get here from Burlington via Route 7 on a ride that is quite short, especially given that it takes you back in time a century or two. To enjoy dinner here you have to make reservations a month in advance. The rooms are exquisite, but the place has no central heating or air conditioning. Cuisine doesn’t get any more farm-to-table than the ISF, but if you simply want the vibe of the place, wander by to watch the artisan cheesemaking operation. It’s housed in a cathedral-like barn and produces cheddar that’s almost too good to share with your house guests, every block of it made from raw milk produced by the Brown Swiss cows that roam the acreage in country contentment. 

The third stop on your tour brings you into Middlebury State Airport, a few miles southeast of the the town’s central business district. Part college town, part county seat, Middlebury is an easy place to feel comfortable in as soon as you arrive — all the more so if you drop by the spirited Two Brothers Tavern on Main Street. You can try their cheddar ale soup, grilled Spanish octopus or the popular comeback burger, made with comeback sauce and offering a taste of Southern-style cooking in the north country. Sabai Sabai Thai Cuisine is a can’t-miss stop for high-quality Asian food — it’s known for a squid specialty called khan soi. 

Drive 15 minutes up Route 7 and you'll come upon the little city of Vergennes, named for a French nobleman who helped swing the American Revolution our way. On Green Street you’ll find Bar Antidote and its pub-crawl pairing, Hired Hand Brewing. The location is hard to miss, given the retro, better-living-through-chemistry logos of these two establishments.

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We’ve known for quite a while that this part of Vermont attracts chefs and innkeepers who could be working in the big cities, but come here instead for the lifestyle. But interestingly, a Vermont farm kid, Ian Huizenga, is currently outdoing most (if not all) of those who parachuted in. Huizenga is the chef and brewer behind Antidote and Hired Hand. He was named Vermont Chef of the Year in 2017, but his talents extend beyond cooking and beer-crafting to interior design and the artistry that goes into his branding and graphics.

Hired Hand would be part of the farm-to-glass movement, if there were enough microbreweries using local ingredients to actually call it a movement. The sourcing effort Huizenga makes to hyper-localize his product is tireless, but worth it. Downstairs from the brewpub, Bar Antidote is where locals and visitors gather to dine on grilled Vermont flat iron steak served on roasted mushroom toast and crispy-crust pizzas — also made with locally sourced fixings.  

If you find that you keep extending your visit, be advised that people have become residents of this region very gradually — without ever consciously deciding they would move here. 

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Tradewind will offer shuttle flights to Stowe beginning in December 2019, and also offers charter flights to Stowe, Burlington, and Middlebury year-round. To reserve a charter, call us at 1-800-376-7922 or click here.

Featured photo: Mark Vandenberg

A Weekend Ramble Through The Berkshires’ North County

On the western edge of Massachusetts, Berkshire County stretches north-south for 60 miles, from the Vermont border to the Connecticut state line. Its vast beauty is too much territory to cover in a long weekend—but thankfully, visitors don’t have to.

The excitement has been traditionally clustered at the southern end, framed by the four towns of Lenox, Becket, Great Barrington, and West Stockbridge. But now, so-called “North County” is equally as compelling.

Pointing the compass northward affords visitors a unique look at the natural splendor and history of the Berkshires. The geographical center of this up-county area is the sigh-inducing college hamlet of Williamstown, which is flanked by a pair of little cities, Pittsfield and North Adams, each artfully reborn out of a faded industrial past.

Photo: Hotel on North

Begin your loop at the compact Pittsfield Municipal Airport—transfer there from your Tradewind flight to a well-appointed rental SUV, and in just minutes, you will have pulled up at Hotel on North, a 45-room boutique hotel that became the beating heart of Pittsfield’s downtown from the day it opened in 2015. A former menswear and sporting goods emporium, the building today is a tour de force of preservation-based remodeling, its good bones exposed and its interiors jazzed up with repurposed trim elements from the distant past. The hotel’s highly popular restaurant, Eat on North, is run by former White House chef Ron Reda.

Take the evening and part of the next day to ramble Pittsfield’s downtown and decide whether all those “Brooklyn of the Berkshires” claims are well-deserved. From District Kitchen and Bar on West Street up to Methuselah at the corner of North and Bradford to the tapas and wine bar Mission a block away, the town’s dining and drinking options invoke rustic-chic sophistication among old-city walkability. Boutiques and retro shops are in abundance, including such favorites as the décor-centric Dory and Ginger, Steven Valenti’s Clothing, and the Berkshire General Store. Morning coffee and first-rate baked goods are steps away at Dottie’s coffee shop, which also boasts the kind of meeting-place vibe that convinces people to move to resurgent communities like this.

Photo: Mission Berkshires

Route 8 out of Pittsfield takes you along the eastern edge of the 12,000-acre Mount Greylock State Reservation. It’s named for the state’s highest peak and laced with upland trails that will carry a hiker deep into the heart of a New England summer. On this trip, you may want to stop by the visitor center and pick up a trail map, in case you’re inspired to plan an outdoorsy return to the area amid October’s cooler air and bonfire-hued foliage. If you opt to skip the park and cruise directly from Pittsfield to North Adams, you’ll be there in less than 30 minutes most days.

What you’ll find on arrival is a pocket-sized city, still somewhat in recovery from a mid-1980s economic blow — but blooming back to life with plenty of charm. Today, the largest museum of contemporary art in the U.S., the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (or Mass MoCA), occupies a 24-acre campus originally built by Sprague Electric, the space-mission contractor that supplied NASA and other federal agencies with advanced circuitry and components till its closure (leading to the town’s aforementioned economic downturn).

Photo: Mass MoCA via Grace Clark

To display the works produced by contemporary art superstars like Sol LeWitt, Laurie Anderson, and Robert Rauschenberg takes vast amounts of inexpensive space — much more than the name-brand museums in big cities have available, but perfectly suited for this unlikely space in The Berkshires. Combine the need for acreage with creative vision, and you’ve got a gritty town fast on the rise whose principal industry is modern art. Odd as that may sound, Mass MoCA reportedly boosted local economic activity by $51 million in 2017 alone.

You soak up the “anything’s possible” zen of North Adams by staying at The Porches, a chic hotel on the Mass MoCA property, or perhaps at the brand-new Tourists, a self-styled “riverside retreat inspired by the classic American roadside motor lodge.” Investors from the California foodie scene designed and built Tourists and its food-and-beverage amenities, featuring a new lounge, The Airport Rooms, serving classic cocktails and a “creative roadhouse” menu. Its executive chef, Corey Wentworth, was recruited from Boston’s Flour Bakery.

Photo: Tourists via Peter Crosby

The artwork at Mass MoCA is vast in scale, which means you go through it more than past it, which makes the appreciation experience looser and more fun. Performing arts further increase the hip factor here — there are film screenings, rock concerts, comedy festivals, and other on-stage exuberance. The beloved and versatile band Wilco has a particular footprint at Mass MoCA, most notably thanks to its biennial Solid Sound Festival — this year, the Wilco event happens June 28th through 30th.

Also on campus is Bright Ideas Brewing, a craft brewery and taproom. Meanwhile, any left or right you take in the general vicinity of the campus will reveal some semi-pro mural or sculpture to echo the crown jewels of the museum. Admittedly, most of us lack the endurance to study art for entire mornings or afternoons — but that’s not the point here. A day in North Adams is actually akin to life inside a “60 Minutes” segment, with socioeconomic and cultural history being made in real time. (If you’re quiet, you can hear the property values rising.)

Fifteen minutes east is prim, prosperous Williamstown, where the top-ranked liberal arts college in the country (per U.S. News) seamlessly merges its verdant campus with the commercial layout of the town. In the summer, the cultural scene around Williams College is ever vibrant. This season, the Broadway-quality dramatic offerings at the Williamstown Theater Festival include one play that’s particularly easy to recommend. It’s a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts starring Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman, on stage through most of August. Meanwhile, the Clark Art Institute has a high-powered French Impressionist exhibit, titled “Renoir: The Body, the Senses,” devoted to Renoir’s unsurpassed achievement in the depiction of body figures.

Photo: Mezze Bistro & Bar via FED Guides

Dining in Williamstown won’t disappoint—perennial favorites include Mezze Bistro & Bar as well as The ‘6 House and Pub, a few minutes outside of town in a rural setting. The Water Street Grill is just right for high-quality tavern fare and live music. Tucked around the corner from Spring Street's shops, pubs, and restaurants is one of the half-dozen best public golf courses in all of New England, Taconic Golf Club. An early-20th-century classic by Stiles and Van Kleek, Taconic is owned by the college, meticulously maintained at all times and recently renovated by Gil Hanse, the most renowned course architect working today.

When your three-stop tour is over, it’s time to head south down historic Route 7 toward Pittsfield, enjoying sublime Berkshires scenery plus endless roadside attractions, from antiques to ice cream to riverfront picnic grounds. An easy hour’s ride on an old country highway, it’s ideal for reflecting on the artsy, urban fascination you’ve encountered while letting the innocence of rural New England summertime float by.

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Tradewind offers private charter flights to the Berkshires year-round on a fleet of Pilatus PC-12s. To reserve a charter, call us at 1-800-376-7922 or click here.

Featured Photo: Tourists via Nick Simonite

A Golfer’s Pilgrimage to Fishers Island

A Tradewind flight across Long Island Sound to Fishers Island offers plenty of breathtaking East Coast views. But for golf aficionados soaring over the eastern end of the seahorse-shaped island, none are more spectacular than the golf perfection spread out below.

Just off the coast of Connecticut, Fishers Island Club opened in 1926 during what’s considered the golden age of course-building. One of the era’s most brilliant architects, Seth Raynor, designed a dozen-plus courses during this time that are still celebrated today — but you’d be justified to call this one his masterpiece. 

Among the experts echoing this view is Thomas Dunne, director of the Golfweek magazine course-rating panel and co-founder of literary golf journal McKellar. He considers Fishers Island to be “one of the 10 best properties for golf anywhere on Earth.”

There’s a section of the course, beginning with the par-4 4th hole, that Dunne finds particularly inspiring. “To me, it’s the greatest nine-hole run in the world,” he says, “if you combine the natural environment with the excellence of its design and construction.”

Gil Hanse, arguably the most sought-after course architect in the world these days, has played Fishers Island many times and finds it unsurpassed as a combination of stunning visuals and strategic subtlety.

“The first time you play it, you can’t appreciate it architecturally,” says Hanse, who designed the course for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “There’s too much beauty to take in, too many water views — [the] Atlantic Ocean, Fishers Island Sound, [and] tidal marsh all frame what you see and tend to mask the complexity of the design.”

He’s talking in part about angles of play — the geometry at work as targets are chosen and a player balances risk-reward. “The third hole, a par-4, has an elevated fairway and a green very exposed to the wind,” Hanse says. “If one golfer opted to drive down the right side and his partner hit a drive down the left, they’d basically be playing two different golf holes — and you’ll find strategic variation like that throughout the round.”

You can’t write about a Seth Raynor course without mentioning the design “standards” or “template holes” he so loved. These have intriguing names like Redan, Eden, Punchbowl, Alps, Biarritz, Double Plateau, and Cape. Along with his mentor, Charles Blair Macdonald, Raynor made a habit of including architectural elements that pay homage to beloved golf holes on historic British courses.

Fishers Island embodies that philosophy in fine fashion. It’s even got an Alps-Punchbowl combination — dramatically high mounds guarding a large, bowl-shaped green that will mercifully kick an off-target shot back toward the flagstick.

Considering his legacy, it’s no surprise that there’s even a Seth Raynor Society. It’s administered by Anthony Pioppi, a writer and course expert who recently published the book The Finest Nines: The Best Nine-Hole Golf Courses in North America.

In the name of participatory journalism, Pioppi made the mid-life decision to caddie on Fishers Island for several summers, during which he absorbed the quirks and cadences of life “seven miles from reality,” as he and others have described the island.

“People there are genuinely friendly, and part of that is because everyone crosses paths everywhere,” says Pioppi. “There are two bars — if you count the American Legion bar — and one grocery store. At the checkout counter you’ll see a club member, a waiter, and a grounds crewman in line together, all making casual conversation.”

The need for caddies is based on the course’s extreme walkability. After finishing a hole, you stroll directly to the next tee, steps away. The flow of the round is never interrupted, except by the beckoning views. Pioppi, as a caddie, would encourage first-time players to “put their scorecards away and just settle into the experience.” At the completion of a hole, he might keep his foursome at the green and have them try chips and putts from various locations to fully appreciate the course’s design subtleties and unique challenges.

Part of what’s magical about flying to Fishers is the 36-hole factor. Not that someone arriving and leaving by ferry couldn’t go around twice in one day, but it’s much easier to make that happen when you’ve got air travel going for you. One Connecticut PGA professional, so thankful for his invitations to play the course that he asked to speak anonymously, has a plane-owning, golf-loving friend with whom he’s made the hop to Fishers more than once.

“We go wheels-up around 7 a.m., get on the tee by 8:15, play the course twice and we’re back home for dinner,” he says. “Meanwhile, you feel like you’ve gone back in time when you’re there. Nothing ever changes. There’s tremendous wealth, but the property owners consider the island just perfect the way it is.”

Lest you’re concerned that Fishers Island Club is a golf mecca you’re not destined to visit, there are several charity tournaments open to off-island golfers who wish to support a good cause (while checking off a major bucket-list item). In the springtime there’s a fundraiser outing for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Groton, Connecticut, which is across the Sound from Fishers. Also in the spring, the club hosts an event to benefit Fishers Island churches. This year on September 16, it’s the Next Step Fishers Island Charity Golf Tournament, supporting skill development of young people with serious illnesses. Scouting online, you’ll find rounds of golf at the club included in silent auctions by one charity or another.

Of course, if you do happen to have a friend who’s a member, you’ll be playing for your own good cause: Sublime enjoyment of oceanside golf at its absolute finest.

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Tradewind offers private charter flights to Fishers Island year-round. To reserve a charter, call us at 1-800-376-7922 or click here.

All photos courtesy of Anthony Pioppi.

Celebrating New Year’s Eve in the Caribbean

If you consider New Year’s a momentous event, you could hardly do better than to spend it in the Caribbean, dressed in your summer clothes, wandering the beaches and vibrant village streets while experiencing the island atmosphere — at once laidback and high-energy — building to a crescendo come December 31.

As you get busy planning your trip there, take note of some alternate phrasing: Caribbean locals refer to the occasion as “Old Year’s Night.” It's a twist on what Dick Clark and the throng of frigid folk in Times Square would say.

Suggesting a Caribbean getaway for New Year’s would be incomplete advice if it failed to include special guidance as to getting there. Certainly, you can rely on commercial airlines for transport into the general region of places like St. Barth, Anguilla, Nevis, and Antigua — all luxury landmarks within the Leeward Islands chain — but in this part of the world the last travel legs are the trickiest. Thus, the indispensable value of private air service via Tradewind Aviation, with its scheduled flights to the most desirable destinations within the storied archipelago.

From a trio of hubs in Puerto Rico, Antigua, and the US Virgin Island of St. Thomas, Tradewind whisks its passengers on Swiss-built Pilatus PC-12 jet-prop aircraft, crewed by two pilots each and ultra-comfortable. The cabins are pressurized and air-conditioned, there’s plenty of luggage space, and the in-flight refreshments are complimentary, including wine and beer. If you’ve got a US passport and your itinerary pivots on San Juan, you’ll breeze through the customs and immigration process. Tradewind has a private airport lounge in San Juan, plus a VIP meet-greet option that ensures smooth transfers between flights. Luggage is also complimentary, and likewise your beloved pets are welcome at no charge.

The damage caused in 2017 by Hurricanes Irma and Maria has mostly been repaired, meanwhile this past storm season came and went without incident. Interestingly, the island of Nevis wasn’t affected at all by the twin tempests, nonetheless it’s the site of a major rebuilding and renovation project. Guests at the famed Four Seasons Resort Nevis, which always pulls out the stops to celebrate New Year’s, will arrive to find completely redesigned guestrooms, an updated Great House lobby, and two brand new restaurants.

Mixologists at the Four Seasons are known for selecting a special rum cocktail from their immense menu of them, as an official toast to the sun’s dip below the horizon on the big night. Caribbean vacationers have always been fixated on sunsets, no matter the season, but the last one of the year inspires particular devotion. Once that ceremony concludes, a Grand Tasting buffet rolls out, featuring every variety of gourmet fare, including caviar, king crab legs, lobster, and fine cuts of meat.

Photo: Christian Horan, courtesy Four Seasons

On the famed French isle of St. Barth, New Year’s is synonymous with film stars, rock stars, and billionaire yachtsmen. Accommodations on a charter yacht are highly favored here, as well as rooms in the island’s many fine hotels — including Le Toiny, Le Sereno, Cheval Blanc, Hotel Christopher, and Le Barthélemy — all recently reopened or opening in December. Two of the newer luxury resorts, Villa Marie and Hotel Manapany, barely missed a beat after the hurricanes (having reopened in early 2018) and are all the more in demand.

One snug harbor on St. Barth, Port de Plaisance, becomes a New Year’s epicenter. The entire basin — dockside berths and anchor moorings alike — sparkles with seafaring works of art. Coming ashore, yacht guests prowl the nearby promenade with its designer boutiques and jewelry shops. When the night of champagne toasts and fireworks finally arrives, they parade along in a New Year’s Eve Regatta that your cellphone photos won’t do justice to.

While fireworks on New Year’s Eve may seem the sole reason to look upward, another Caribbean pleasure shouldn’t be forgotten — island stargazing, either on beachfronts or the open water. Short charter excursions on boats that make a specialty of leaving the ambient light behind and acting as docents for the starry dome are common in these islands. You should consider getting aboard one of them, binoculars in hand. For most US residents, the arrangement of stars and constellations across the winter sky may prove disorienting at first, with Polaris appearing much lower than one is used to and the three points of Orion’s belt poised considerably higher.

Photo: Curtain Bluff

Along with St. Barth and Nevis, the Tradewind route map also includes Anguilla, a British territory 16 miles long, and further down the chain to the southeast, Antigua with its rainforests, reef-lined beaches, and posh resorts.

One holiday enclave on Antigua that’s worth booking is Curtain Bluff, which drew raves for its $13-million renovation in 2017 and has continued making guest-pleasing improvements since. These include beautification of its one-bedroom Bluff Suites and redesign of its beachfront Seagrape restaurant. Service on the sand is available from an expanded Beach Concierge service. You’re stretched out on lounge chair, surrounded by turquoise waters, and staff members are bringing you a light lunch… yes, all that.

Of course, world-class relaxation can prompt an urge to get up and get moving. If you’re visiting Anguilla and you brought sturdy footwear, the famed hiking trails offer rugged beauty and fascinating bird life, including the magnificent frigatebird, with its sculpted wing profile against blue skies over famed Windward Point. New lodging options on Anguilla include the 65-room boutique hotel Zemi Beach House and the nine-room Quintessence Hotel, ultra-luxurious and exclusive.

A full-scale travel guide to New Year’s in the Caribbean would surely be book-length — these quick highlights are simply meant to inspire. No matter where your journey takes you, the islands present an unforgettable way to ring in 2019.

Featured Photo: Curtain Bluff

On Two Islands, Two Iconic Photographers

When she has a morning or afternoon free to point her camera anywhere at all, Cary Hazlegrove checks the tide charts and heads to Little Neck at dead low. Twice every day, that breezy western stretch of Nantucket island offers up seascape magnificence of one texture or another.

“Every low tide there is amazing,” says Hazlegrove, who arrived on the island 40 years ago with her Canon FTb manual-focus and no notion of making a career in photography. All these decades and installations and coffee table books later, she would qualify as Nantucket’s photographer laureate, if there were such a thing. Raised in Roanoke, VA, where her father practiced law and her mother was (and still is) a painter-sculptor, Hazlegrove made her life and her work into a combined art form, putting down deep roots in a creative community of island dwellers.

Her colleague and friend on the neighboring outpost of Martha’s Vineyard, the estimable Alison Shaw, has earned a similar distinction on her own shores. Shaw, who also made her way to these isles off Cape Cod in the experimental days of the 1970s, even has her own commercial space. You can admire her fine-art photos of the Vineyard year-round at the Alison Shaw Gallery, which Shaw owns with Sue Dawson, her partner in life as well as in business. The gallery can be found in a converted firehouse tucked into a historic section of Oak Bluffs called the Arts District.

Ferry Martha's Vineyard docked at Oak Bluffs, by Alison Shaw

When Shaw took up residence in Martha’s Vineyard, she was already a photographer and already familiar with the terrain, having spent childhood summers exploring it. She went to work for the island’s weekly paper, the Vineyard Gazette, and shot her own stuff on the side. Her mother had been a professional photographer, back in the pre-digital days of film, and young Alison learned by her side — in the field and in the darkroom, too.

Unlike Hazlegrove, who takes pleasure in shooting portraits, weddings, and the island’s manorial homes, Shaw uses time away from gallery management for fine-art photography only. “I have wonderful clients who come back year after year — one of them owns about 60 of my pieces — and when they ask about family portraits it’s always a painful moment,” says Shaw. “I have to find a polite way to say no.”

One of her many departures from this practice involves wooden boat-building — the aesthetics of that craft being so reliably interesting. A 40-by-50 color print on canvas, titled, “Schooner, Gannon & Benjamin Boat Yard 2001,” attests to what she can do with this visual material. It’s in the Shaw catalogue priced at $3,625.

Bike riding in Codfish Park, by Cary Hazlegrove | NantucketStock

In a typical year, roaming the Vineyard in all conditions and at all hours, Shaw produces 20 to 25 new pieces that she can call gallery-worthy. To see a wide selection of Hazlegrove’s work you would be guided to installations like the one put up recently at the Sconset Cafe, a top-rated eatery and exhibit space on Nantucket's eastern edge.

Hazlegrove moonlights as a singer in a progressive bluegrass and folk band called 4EZ Payments, who do some of their most inspired picking at Cisco Brewers out on Bartlett Farm Road. Her husband, the musician and composer A.W. Bullington, writes scores for films, podcasts, and ads and also composes the soundtracks for his wife’s documentary-style productions, which are montages of still photographs, video segments, original music, and a voice track of island residents offering descriptive and narrative ruminations. She’s done a long series of these multi-media expressions, which are available as DVDs and iBooks.

Shaw’s other creative outlet is teaching. She co-teaches a six-month mentoring program on the Vineyard together with Dawson (who brings to the program her expertise in graphic design, writing, social media, website design, and marketing) and also conducts workshops on the island, as well as in Maine and across the sound on Cape Cod. “I get a lot of fulfillment being with people who are true photo enthusiasts,” Shaw says. "Teaching keeps me energized, and so does the change of place I get when I do it.”

Lagoon Pond, by Alison Shaw

Locales like an Outer Cape beach are not exactly exotic for Shaw, but they have the benefit of being elsewhere than Martha’s Vineyard. Living on a relatively small island and spending a lifetime shooting landscapes and seascapes, you end up looking through the viewfinder at a lot of scenery you’ve already photographed. “If I were living in a mainland environment,” Shaw says, “I would head off to the next town or the next city to find something that’s visually new to me. On an island you’re forced to dig deeper.”

The Vineyard’s long summer days are an idyll for the rest of us, but for someone who earns a living shooting exteriors, it means getting up at 3:30 am to make good use of the morning glow, then waiting forever for the interesting contrasts and shadows of late-day light.

“Weather is an inspiration,” says Shaw. “The bigger storms light a fire under me. They can make the world change before your eyes, and when they’re gone some of them will have left the landscape — dunes and beaches especially — amazingly different from what it was before.”

Brant Point Lighthouse, by Cary Hazlegrove | NantucketStock

Well-remembered comments by New Englanders about man’s juxtaposition with nature include this musing on the part of Henry David Thoreau: “For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though [I was] never paid.” Some hear ironic self-deprecation in Thoreau’s comment, others a sincere grievance. Asked about it, Hazlegrove says she has long admired that quotation from Walden though she doesn’t personally identify with it.

“He felt a responsibility for what he came across in his ramblings,” she says — and indeed the rest of the quote is about Thoreau’s labors to keep “woodland paths open” and “ravines bridged and passable at all seasons.” That would not be the Hazlegrove mindset. “I’m drawn to whatever it is nature chooses to do, with no thought of cleaning up after it,” she says. “I just want to appreciate it.”

There are wintertime stretches when these islands experience a storm, its aftermath, another storm, another aftermath, over and over. “Weather is entertainment out here,” says Hazlegrove, citing the visual drama of a Nor’easter barreling up the Seaboard, bound for Nantucket. “But if you look at my work you’ll probably notice I tend to shoot what’s peaceful.”

Oak Bluffs Jetty, by Alison Shaw

Art that’s peaceful can still challenge an audience’s discernment, every bit as much as something raucous or confrontational. Shaw studied painting at Smith College and earned an art history degree there. She observes that, “The painter and the photographer end up in the same place, it’s just that the photographer starts with reality and has to work away from it — that’s a subtractive process, versus the painter starting with a blank canvas and doing something additive.”

That observation dovetails well with a trenchant line from Susan Sontag’s modern philosophical treatise, On Photography. In it Sontag declares, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”

It’s estimated that over a trillion digital photos are taken each year with smartphones, most of them so heedlessly executed they give point-and-shoot a bad name. For the artist with a camera, wandering woodland or dunes or shorefront — and bearing the weight of their lofty aesthetic standards — the pursuit is demanding, at times surely daunting. View by view, motif by motif, you frame up the surface of the world, aching to give it depth.

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Tradewind Aviation offers up to 25 scheduled shuttle flights to Nantucket every day from late April through early December – as well as private charters. Shuttles to Martha’s Vineyard run Thursday through Monday from May through November, with up to 15 flights per day.

Featured Photo: Aerial view of Great Point Lighthouse, by Cary Hazlegrove | NantucketStock