Ski Dutch Hill Patch (Round) — c. 1970s

A vintage Ski Dutch Hill patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, featuring a skier in a yellow jacket dropping past a bare blue tree on a pale slope. Round, gold merrowed border, SKI DUTCH HILL stacked in navy block caps with HEARTWELLVILLE VT. beneath. The same artwork as the sealed one, out of the bag and into a life.

The hill closed in 1985. For twenty years after that it was simply woods with an odd shape to them. Then people started going back — not with lifts or permits or a business plan, but with chainsaws and hand saws, cutting the glades back open a few trees at a time so that the terrain could be skied by anybody willing to walk up it.

That is happening at a number of dead New England ski areas now, and it is the only genuinely hopeful thing in the whole lost-mountain story. The lifts are not coming back. But the hill is still a hill, and the snow still falls on it, and there is a small determined population of people who consider that sufficient.

This patch is the paperwork from the first version. Somebody is out there right now making the second one.

There is no ticket, no patrol and no guarantee of anything. There is also no lift line, which a certain kind of person considers an even trade.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.