Caspian Lake

Wallace Stegner summered on Caspian Lake for roughly fifty years, minus a brief exile of his own making. His 1947 novel Second Growth portrayed the townspeople of Greensboro, the village at the lake’s edge in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, unflatteringly enough that many took offense, and the Stegners stayed away for a few summers. He returned, set Crossing to Safety on this clear, cold, spring-fed lake, and he and his wife Mary are buried in the Lincoln-Noyce Cemetery above it: a Pulitzer Prize winner at permanent rest among the neighbors he once offended.

The depth contours match the lake’s reputation. From a clean, simple shoreline the lines step steadily down to a central basin about 100 feet deep, tightening where the glacial bowl falls away and easing across the sandy shallows near the village beach. The map is spare and orderly, much like the lake itself: no islands, no maze of coves, just a deep, clear basin held in a ring of hills.