My wife and I went to Vermont for the weekend. We have a cabin on a lake up there and it is becoming a home away from home. We love the people, the vibrant fall colors [though not totally realized just yet, another 2-3 weeks] and the overall culture of the place. We shopped and dined in Burlington and loved every minute of it. The Farmers market on Saturday Mornings in the Green is not to be missed. We were talking on our way back south to CT, that the peoples of Vermont are a little different. You have several distinct groups. Your ol’Vermonter’s who understand a little french and have a congenial sense about them. Your nouveau riche New Yorkers who come in and have the weekend home in the hills and the appartment on 5th avenue and then you have simple living freeformers remnants of the Hippy culture who love natural things and facial hair. Throw in the college professors and diehard liberals and you’ve got a healthy soup of America.
We like the way people support independent living, businesses and a humblness that is rare in other parts of New England. I think it’s safe to say if my wife and I were not so vested in the ocean we’d move in a heart beat. But that lake [champlain] gives a feel of the ocean without the salt. Very nice indeed.
Vermont almost makes me feel like buying a home in the hills, putting up a nice treehouse-office, grabbing my pipe and writing a novel about oak trees philosophical idealism… Whoa if life was that easy…But I tell you what, those Vermonters make it look that easy.
West coast dopers do you find the same things in your areas? How about other parts of the U.S or Canada, Europe, Australia?
Oh, I love Vermont. I live in NY, and the way NY & MA & NJ deals with things is familiar to me, and I like it, but Vermont has a totally different feel. Everyone is so laid back and relaxed. It’s got that real country feel without the racism unfortunately prevalent in so many other “country” type areas (and I do speak from experience here.)
When I used to work for a carpet wholesaler NY & MA used to be all like “Gimme my carpet, NOW!” And Vermonters would be like “Next Tuesday would be fine, how was your weekend?”
We go every fall to visit and bask in the environment. I want to move there, it’d practically only be a half hour east, but you don’t get the real feel until you go a little deeper in.
I lived in Burlington for 3 years and loved every second of it. Given the chance, I would go back there in a blink. Pity that my wife is allergic to snow.
Heh. It snows everywhere up here. NY isn’t really much different, unfortunately. I actually like the challenge and the variety of our weather; it forces you to deal with most of the climes throughout the year. I feel it makes us tougher! Grrr!
I have often said I would like to get a cabin in Vermont. I love fall and it just seems like I would love the area. So far I have other things I’m spending my money on, but maybe some day.
Vermont is too cold. When my dad lived in the Burkes years ago, we could expect 40 degree nights in August. Of course my mom, brother and I lived between Plattsburg and the border, so we had cold, but not that extreme.
We found people were pretentious in their lack of pretention. Like they’d go out of the way to look plain and act ignorant. Even Burlington wasn’t pretentious when I knew Vermont. Even now my step siblings think that combing your hair and wearing NEW LL Bean is the way to get gussied up for a wedding.
Also…and purely anecdotal…
When a student makes a counseling appointment in our office and has an 802 area code we generally can guess it’s going to be more complicated.
I lived in Burlington for about 2 years - overall, it was fantastic. We arrived in the fall in time for the autumn colors. The first winter was all sunshine and fresh powder - a snowboarder’s dream. It was very difficult for me to get used to how s-l-o-w-l-y people drove in the winter! But all it took was one or two spinouts in the snow, and I began to understand why.
The restaurants there are great. I lived minutes away from the best bagels I ever had in my life. Lobster rolls - yum. I made friends with people fairly easily. They made fun of me saying “stoked” and “bummer”. The summer was simply amazing - the town fills with people, and there is something going on every day and every night. The breweries there are also amazing! We biked along the lake, swam in the lake, swam at the gorge, hiked all over the place, and even went snowshoeing a couple of times. Hiked Camel’s Hump a few times, too. It was a fairly quick jaunt to Portmouth, NH or Portland, ME, both of which are nice spots to get away for the weekend.
The second winter was tough, though; nothing but mud and ice, you couldn’t snowboard because of the conditions (unless you wanted deep scratches in your board), and it was WAY colder - it got to -20F a couple of times. It was pretty miserable. Thank goodness for the Vermont Pub and Brewery! I stayed through the entire next summer but then I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend and decided to head back to California. I still remember Burlington quite fondly, though. I’ll have to get back there sometime - but definitely in the summer.
Well my wife has an opportunity to teach at UVM, but she is too involved in her current state of affairs to do so as of now. Me, I’d move in a heartbeat and do the treehouse/novel thing…but I think I’d like to winter there once and see if it was for us. I’m a skier and she is not, she liks it, but it’s not a necessity…I don’t mind the cold at all. Thats why Vermonter’s invented Layering…or was that the Canadians?
My buddy’s wife was working there for a couple of years, and he considered relocating. As I recall, he didn’t have a good thing to say about the place. My recollection is that he basically felt you’d be treated as a second class citizen if you couldn’t trace your New England family back several generations.
I always wondered how much, counting for comic exaggeration, NEWHART mirrored life in Vermont. I suspect it might be a pretty good picture, as it was portrayed with a humorous affection as might be written by people who knew the area. How correct is this?
I’ve never been asked about my New England heritage, everytime I end up at the lake our neighbors have us over for dinner and we start up conversation as if we just left, and this is sometimes after not seeing them for a year. I love that about it. And they have been in vermont for 3-4 generations.
Thats a great movie and it sort of shows what some of Vermont is like. I think the movie [old movie] Baby Boomers with Diane Keaton shows Vermonters in a similar light…
That’s true in Vermont and New Hampshire too. I’ll always be a flatlander who moved in and property taxes have driven natives out of their generations-long hometowns.
People are more accepting of quirkiness and outliers but I kind of can identify with the “pretentious in their unpretention”. Yeah, people dress down or “artistically” but it’s the right set of LLBean gear.
On the whole I am happy I live here. I am friends with other flatlanders, but flatlanders who have been here 20-30 years and are a mix of fitting in and observing from outside nativeness. Most people say hello and are open to chat, except maybe the Yankee oldtimers. They are relatively taciturn but not unfriendly. Racism? It’s not really evident but I’ve definitely heard it in private from old timers.
You’ll get a lot of types up here. Some people hate you unless you can trace your VT roots back X generations, others are very “hippy,” for lack of a better word, and love everyone and everything…man.
But in general most people are very accepting up here. I love it here, and if it weren’t for the fact that I have almost no job options here, I would stay when I got done with grad school at UVM.
What do you do Bouv that you can’t find in VT? Just wonder’in.
And Ghanima - that was cool.
On the pie note, I was at a restaurant in the Northeast Kingdom [Willoughby Gap] and when I ordered their Apple Pie it came with a healthy slice of Cheddar Cheese on top. Oh Yeah Baby! Keep it com’in!
