I Am A Vermonter

I read a book a few years ago which stated quite emphatically that it was impossible to be a 'Mainer' unless you had not only been born in Maine, but that you could claim to have lived there all your life and have at least 3 generations of ancestors who had also been born in and lived in Maine.  Even so, the people along Rt. 1 in southern Maine were suspect, since they had been tainted by the proximity of New Hampshire and Massachusetts!

 

With the mobility of our society it has become harder and harder to find people who fit these qualifications anywhere, even here in Vermont.  There are a few people, don't get me wrong, but people move around all the time for the sake of school, jobs and relationships.  I myself have a hard time claiming any one place as having 'grown up there'.  An Air Force Brat, we lived in Maine, North Carolina, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  My dad retired to Massachusetts and that is where I graduated from High School, went to college and met my wife.  Both of my children were born there.  But to each of those places I was, as we say in Vermont, a 'foreigner'.  I always felt out of place.

 

So, what place can I claim affiliation with? New England, certainly. Except for four years in North Carolina...a little slice of Hades for me...I have lived somewhere in New England.   (New England for me, being a true Yankee, the western and southern edges are defined by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont!)  I have, however, found my true home in Vermont.  This is not a home defined by birth, since I was born in Maine.  I did not graduate from a High School in Vermont, nor did I go to college in Vermont.  From the first days we lived here my wife and I felt, somehow, that we had finally come home.

 

I do have one overriding claim to Vermont that people born and raised here may not have.  I CHOSE to live here.  I made a conscious decision to live here.  Even in the hard times...I have been laid off three times while living here...I did not move away.  I love the people here.  Not the 'foreigners' whose 'foreign-ness' is defined by the high-handed assumption of city-fied superiority and who would move away at the first chance for a warmer climate or a better job, but those people who have worked hard to stay here despite the challenges.  Many of those old-time Vermonters are being priced out of the housing market because  'out of staters' are driving prices up.  But still they stay and struggle on.

I love these people who know what a 'deer camp' is, and first day of deer season is practically a state holiday.  These are the same people who still speak in local metaphors which we the locals all understand but sound like gibberish to out-of-staters.  They have a huge sense of being very independent; Vermont was, along with Texas and Hawaii, an actual sovereign country before becoming a state.

Vermonters are those people who, like one of my brand-new neighbors in late 2000, stopped his pickup truck and pulled me and my UHaul trailer out of a ditch and refused to even talk about me giving him a twenty-dollar bill.  Why?  Because we were neighbors.  People like the guy who gave us a gallon of freshly boiled maple syrup, just 'because'.  Like my next-door neighbor who gave me his friendship from the very first day, and who I was honored to be asked to perform his funeral when he died of cancer.  People like the wonderful sixth-generation former dairy farmer in my church, who along with his wife would give you the shirt off his back if he could help you.  Or the 'new' Vermonter who along with his wife recently became American citizens, and came over with another friend  to help me cut down and limb several hazardous trees in my yard...and wouldn't even stay for lunch.  We all need more friends and neighbors like this.

 

Abraham was promised a land to be his, and Moses led his people to a land 'flowing with milk and honey'. 

 

So, I am a Vermonter.  This is my 'promised land'. I chose to live here.  And that makes all the difference.

“The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’"  Gen 24:7 (NIV)

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