I'm Erica Heilman and this is Rumble Strip.

It's spring in Vermont and it's been a full year since we heard from my friend Leeland.

When we left him last year, he was just about to graduate from Callis Elementary

School and move up to the big Union Medal School. Leeland is my neighbor, and this will

be my third year talking with him on tape about what he's doing, what he's thinking about.

He talks about revolutionary war reenactments and friend groups and grief.

Leland takes me around and shows me all the places I forgot about in the 30-something years, since I was 13.

This year we decided to meet down in the valley between our two houses.

We crouched in a stand of dead reeds by

Peek and Brooke which runs all through our town and Leland gave me some highlights

from his year. Here's Leland.

To get here I walked down my hill and then walked along a kind of short dirt road over a bridge and across Peak and Brook, which is a

breath that flows really curvy and like everywhere around town.

At this point, at this part it's just kind of a small stream but at other parts there's four feet of water and it's

really good for swimming good for fishing good for really anything water

related and right now we're at water related.

And right now we're at another bridge at Pekinbrook,

right by the old Armstrong House. And some new people, I didn't even know some new people moved in there.

Yeah, because the old farmer had a heart attack.

He was kind of pretty old.

Do you know what happened?

Uh, I know that he was on his tractor in this field right here and he had a heart attack last winter. I feel like you might have been plowing or something. I don't

...