The Maple Room

The first door on the right, just past the entrance. It’s the smallest of the five rooms, and the one you can come and go from without crossing the house — its own door opens onto the lot, which matters more than it sounds when you’re out for the lift at six.

Inside, a queen bed under an iron headboard, and a pastoral oil hung above it: sheep, a pond, the sort of painting you stop seeing by the second morning. A round table for two sits in the window. After dark a tall woven lamp does most of the work. The heat is oil and generous — guests tend to turn it down.

Mornings

Coffee at the table while the window goes from black to grey to the red barn across the lot. In winter the balcony fills with snow and the two iron stools stay empty until someone takes a mug out to them. The ensuite is small and good: a glass bowl sink, a heated rail for the towels, a shower that runs hot.

Okemo is twenty-five minutes off, Mt. Ascutney closer, and the Weathersfield Inn serves dinner a short drive down the road. Most people here are on their way to a mountain — in late, out early. The room is built for that. Quiet, warm, near the door.