The late W.S. Merwin, a former U.S. poet laureate who died in 2019 at age 91, had a poem about this time of year, a time of change, in which he wrote, “I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.”

Taking a look back at photos from October 2008, it would appear that many people share that sentiment. It’s a time to start thinking about winter, to see leaves and other vegetation wither and die, but also an opportunity to seize the light and color and remaining warmth and still have some fun.

That was the case with the annual Bark in the Park event that year in Norwich, where hundreds of Upper Valley residents — and 200 dogs — entered such contests as longest-tail, look-alike and best-dressed.

Among them were Norwich resident Emma Woloshin, her friend Siobhan Seigne and the Woloshin family’s Skye terrier, Morgie.

The girls, then both 11, tied up their hair to mimic Morgie’s floppy ears, and Emma made a face to look like her dog, which had a long tail, as they were photographed.

“I thought they said ‘look like the dog,’ and so I made that face and it made it into the paper,” Woloshin said last week. And when she saw the photo in the Valley News, “I remember being surprised that Siobhan wasn't also making a face like mine.”

(The pair are still friends and stay in touch. Woloshin now lives in the Burlington area and works for the Special Needs Support Center in White River Junction, and Seigne is in Moldova).

They weren’t the only ones hamming it up on the pages of the Valley News back in 2008.

Peter Lihatsh, then a Sharon resident, put a pot on his head to play Johnny Appleseed during an apple festival at the Morrill Homestead in Strafford. It’s a role he played for several years at the festival. “People sure give you strange looks in Kmart when you start putting pots on your head to find one that fits," he said at the time.

And Roy Mitchell, an agricultural worker from Jamaica who was celebrating his 49th birthday, wore a crown on his head as he picked eggplant at Edgewater Farm, his longtime employer in Plainfield.

There were other rituals of fall, too. Tyler Coutermarsh, then 8, got some hunting and gun-safety tips from Lebanon resident Victor Lockwood before going into the woods for youth hunting season. 

And Vermont Agency of Transportation crews did last-minute work before winter. In one big case, AOT crews had to repair a section of an overpass along Interstate 89 in Sharon after a slab of granite fell off a flatbed truck.

As for Morgie, the Woloshin’s terrier, she died about four years ago.

“She had the most beautiful green eyes, they were like human eyes, and she was just sweet and gentle,” Emma Woloshin remembers.

Fortunately, just as October eventually leads to the rebirth of spring, the family has another Skye terrier, though one darker, black and gray.

John Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.

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