Tressa was up. Lillian Gallup heard movement upstairs and assumed it was her houseguest Tressa Dustin. It was just after eight in the morning. Lillian waited but Tressa didn’t come down. An hour later, Lillian went upstairs and found the guest room empty.

Clarence Adams

Vermont is known for the beauty of its woods and mountains, but the cost of that beauty is often forgotten. For much of our history, Vermonters endured unimaginable hardship and poverty that limited opportunities for growth and preserved, as if unchanged, the landscape of today. Their suffering is always with us, written on the land, inscribed in cellar-holes and graveyards and orchards gone to wild. Welcome to These Dark Mountains.&nbsp;