Mount Tom Pogue Lake Woodstock
— — the small pond the mountain keeps.
Not only on a wall.
“The Pogue sits in a fold of Mount Tom, fourteen acres of dark water above Woodstock village. The carriage roads laid out by Frederick Billings curve up through hemlock and sugar maple and arrive at the pond like an afterthought. People walk up after breakfast at the Inn. Nobody talks much at the water's edge. from the studio
Mount Tom Pogue Lake Woodstock, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Mount Tom rises to roughly 1,250 feet directly above Woodstock, Vermont, on the west bank of the Ottauquechee River. The Pogue, a fourteen-acre upland pond near the summit, sits inside Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, the only unit of the National Park System dedicated to the history of conservation in the United States. The carriage-road network was laid out in the late 19th century by Frederick Billings, who restored the eroded hillside with hardwoods and native conifers. The park is reached from Elm Street in the village.
The Pogue is small, shallow, and quiet. Fourteen acres of water held in a glacial depression near the top of Mount Tom, fed by springs and surface runoff rather than a major stream. Locals fish it for bass and pickerel and it freezes solid by January. The trail loops the entire shoreline in just over a mile, passing through a stand of red pine planted by the Billings family in the 1880s. In autumn the surface mirrors the canopy and the colour holds for about two weeks.
Three seasons carry Mount Tom. Late September through mid-October is foliage, and the carriage roads fill with walkers from the Woodstock Inn and the Billings Farm and Museum. Winter turns the network into a groomed touring system run by the Woodstock Inn Nordic Center. May reopens the woods, with trillium and trout lily in the understory before the canopy closes. The park gate at Elm Street opens at dawn year-round; the visitor center keeps shorter hours, late May through October. Most walkers reach The Pogue in under an hour.