What I Miss About Vermont

“What do you miss about Vermont?”

It’s a question people often ask me when I moved back here after living and working in the Green Mountains for two decades.

First, an explanation. This place has always been home, and the return to the South Fork wasn’t so much a decision as a process. My wife and I could have seen it all through up north. We loved it, raised our family there, built a life.

But over a decade ago, we began spending more time here — drawn by family, a family home, an ailing elder. There was also, of course, that web of a lifetime of friends, and that intangible thing called roots, coming clear, for example, when strangers at the hardware store ask after my uncle, or my father, or my cousins.

Pretty soon, we’d sold it all in Vermont — a business and a home — and we were here, down the street from where we were married in Springs, right back where we’d begun.

This is a very different place from Vermont. The Green Mountain State is the New Zealand of the United States: somewhat isolated, mountainous and lush, with a self-reliant, fiercely independent, libertarian and mostly liberal population.

Vermont is also a brand: healthy, beautiful, unspoiled, small-farm agricultural, innovative (think Ben and Jerry’s, and Burton, and Seventh Generation, among others), the Napa of beer.

But Vermont, the brand, is just that — an image. Like so many American states, it also has serious social and economic problems, including much poverty, which is the root cause of a high incidence of domestic violence and an opioid crisis, which, in turn, is largely to blame for crime in the bigger towns. I harbor no illusions.

But I do miss Vermont. I could always feel my heart rate slow a few beats when we crossed north into the state on the interstate, the green hills fanning out ahead.

Much about Vermont is admirable: how the state (with my help) can repeatedly elect a Republican governor, even as it keeps Democrats in control of the legislature; the state’s collective reverence for nature, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum; the closeness and smallness of the communities, which force good behavior, a certain respect and decency.

Vermont, home to about 650,000 souls, is the second-least populous state, after Wyoming. Life in that collection of small towns is open — exposed, if you will — and that’s mostly a good thing.

Thanks to its smallness and to the state’s long tradition of the annual town meeting on the first Tuesday in March in every community, Vermont seems to have preserved, almost nurtured, a sense that we are all in this together. There is accountability in the smallness.

“In a hurry this morning, eh?” came the question as I grabbed a few things at the grocery store one afternoon a few years into our arrival.

“Huh?” I replied.

“Got word you jumped the three-way downtown.”

That was life in Vermont. I’d not waited my turn at the main intersection in town. Word had gotten around.

I never did that again.

Such encounters were often more than a chance to scold, and the conversation probably ended with something like, “Well, I hope you weren’t in a hurry for any trouble …”

What I found in spades across Vermont was a willingness, a desire, even, to respectfully share expectations of one another, expectations of our conduct, which can be benchmarks for expectations of ourselves, for defining our values, our community. What could be more important these days as we pull away from each other into toxic “them” and “us,” along economic, political, religious, and native and local-versus-outsider lines?

Our house was at the bottom of a long, steep hill. Shortly after moving in, I reached out to the local police chief and asked if he could slow the traffic zooming past upward of the 30 mph speed limit. He posted a squad car nearby.

Not long afterward, the farmer who lived at the top of the hill found me at a gathering. His milk truck on the morning run was a major speeding offender.

“That was a strange hello to your neighbors,” he offered, wisely, with a smile and twinkle. “Call me next time.”

He was right, of course. We became friends.

I haven’t found a better state motto than Vermont’s: “Freedom and unity.” Two opposing, aspirational ideals, which speak to the very foundation of this country. The health and happiness in any society comes from the potent stimulus of individual liberty and the strength and satisfaction derived from working together and caring for one another.

We are so far from that these days. President Donald Trump and his entourage hurl hate upon hate on at least half of the U.S. citizenry. He hates his opponents, he says, and is demanding, forcing our silence and our obeisance. We are liars, stupid, people destroying America. No freedom, no unity.

Fittingly, New York’s motto is precisely New York: “Excelsior,” which means “ever upward.” It has more than a whiff of the competitive, elbows-out place where we live, but also hints at a transcendent awakening, a rising, which is my preferred takeaway.

What I miss about Vermont is what I seek and have found here. It resides in most smaller communities where we work together to live together. People who serve, people who listen, people who smile, generous people, people who love and revere nature.

One of the things about Vermonters is that they know how to do useful things, like how to safely clear a roof of snow, and how to drive on icy roads, how to cob-stack wood so the stack will stay standing, how to run a wood stove efficiently, how to fell a nuisance tree. After 20 years there, I’m pretty handy.

“I need a jump.”

The man had waved me over in the busy summer traffic on Main Street in Sag Harbor a few years ago. He was standing by the bed of his parked truck, the open hood facing the storefronts.

Traffic piled up behind my Toyota pickup. Annoyed drivers honked. I got him to deal with the angry drivers as I angled in as closely as possible. Then I pulled out my long jumper cables from the bed of my truck and got him going.

As I unclipped the cables and got ready to pull away, I asked: “Why’d you stop me?” After all, the street was filled with possible helpers, and the fire department was across the street.

The guy smiled and pointed to my Vermont license plates. I had yet to change them out.

“I knew you’d stop, and I knew you’d help.”

I laughed.

“Yeah,” I replied. “But I’m actually from here.”