The Vermont national character

I am from Vermont. Vermont is not a place that many people are from and most people have some pretty strange conceptions about what it is like. So in this essay I shall explain the national character of Vermont. I say ‘national’ because, while I am very proud of my state, like so much of New England, Vermont barely counts as America any more (I view this as a good thing in some ways).

            Most Vermonters are hippies. But we aren’t your typical hippies. No, we’re the sorts of hippies who climb mountains, stand on the summit in a snowstorm, and let out the great, half-deranged Vermont ‘YEEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!’ as if to say ‘we’re here, we’re Vermonters, come and get us.’ This is why we were the first state to legalise civil unions for gays, why we fought just as hard against New York and New Hampshire as we did against Britain, and why we retained our independence until 1791 as the Vermont Republic. Our governor during this time was Thomas Chittenden, who only had one working eye because of an incident with a catamount.

            This seeming paradox is due to Vermont’s history. For most of our history we were peopled by proud and hardy mountaineers and farmers—first Algonquin and Abenaki Indians, then the French, then settlers from Connecticut. Then in the 1960s Vermont started to attract hippies because of the forests and mountains (the state’s name comes from the French for ‘green mountain’). In true New England fashion, instead of clashing, these groups merged. Hence proud and hardy hippies who don’t take shit from anybody.

            Vermonters, like Minnesotans and other Lutherans, are not summer people. Heat bothers us and humidity bothers us even more. But unlike them, we are also not winter people. We like the occasional snowstorm but it’s not as central to our character—the only people in Vermont who are obsessed with skiing are tourists and people who were born in warmer climes. No, we are characterised by a season unique to us: mud season, when the snow melts and trickles down from the hills and mountains, soaking the ground to such an extent that the roads, many of which are still unpaved, are even more treacherous than they are immediately after our frequent winter storms. Consequently the Vermonter must have large stocks of such foods as salted meat, root vegetables, yeast, beans, and cheese, which diet affects his daily, er, movements and thus his overall comfort level. We spend these times indoors with our families, catching up on sports, watching television, reading a good book, and sometimes even working and playing in the mud itself. We’re also into autumn because of the foliage. Seriously, you have to see it to believe it. Especially the maples. More about maple trees later.

            A word about the comfort level: we Vermonters like to enjoy ourselves. We may be proud and hardy, but we’re not dour and most of us don’t particularly like people who are. This is not to say that we’re all complacent sheep, because we’re not. We nourish one another’s idiosyncrasies and rejoice in them. No Vermonter is like any other Vermonter, partly because almost no Vermonter lives within a mile of any sizeable group of other Vermonters. But there are generalisations that can be made, or I wouldn’t be writing this.

            Vermont has always taken pride in its cultural separation from a lot of America. We voted Republican in almost every election up to the eighties, not because we are a conservative state but because we wanted a nice on-the-record ‘screw you’ to Massachusetts and New York. Then we started voting Democratic for ideological reasons and because of the hippies. We are also the only state that went for William Wirt in 1832, which is unsurprising because literally Wirt’s entire platform rested on the fact that he was no longer a Freemason.

            Our obsessions, as a state that fancies itself a nation, are maple trees and cows. Just as the rest of America looks askance at this, we look askance at the rest of America’s obsession with sport and celebrity. Except for the Boston Red Sox. You’re not a true Vermonter unless you’re a BoSox fan. Red Sox great Carlton Fisk was from Bellows Falls!

            We also like Vermont itself. A lot. If you want to learn the hard way how tough Vermonters can be, here’s how: go up to the Northeast Kingdom (that’s north-eastern Vermont for those of you who are retarded or something—we like the word ‘retarded,’ just like our cousins in Massachusetts, although we never fully latched on to ‘homo’ for some reason), find any given male (and most given females) over the age of fifteen or so, and make a disparaging remark about Ethan Allen.

            Our maple tree and cow obsessions have a very obvious and simple reason: we are the world’s second-largest source of maple syrup after Quebec and dairy is our main non-maple-related industry. You’d be amazed at what Vermonters have done with milk and maple sap (though very rarely mixed together: Vermont is just sane enough as a state to know that that would taste god-awful).

            Our state motto is ‘Freedom and Unity.’ This originated on our currency back when we were an independent republic, which was called…wait for it…the vermontensium. Yes. But we seldom use this motto in places other than our flag and seal (both of which depict a stag’s head, a pine tree, some cows, some wheat sheaves, a river, and a mountain). Instead we use ‘YEEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!’, the standard Vermont response to, among other things, a Red Sox victory, a Phish tour, windfall maple profits, the beating up of somebody from New York or New Hampshire, and Brattleboro’s resolution to put a standing arrest warrant for Bush and Cheney, which my friend Audrey introduced and which passed in a landslide. Indeed, our only complaint with Howard Dean is that his Vermont ‘YEEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!’, while technically proficient, lacked the requisite passion (I do it in my chest because my throat isn’t strong enough; I haven’t had much occasion for it since moving to New Jersey, unfortunately).

            The largest religious group in Vermont is Roman Catholicism, mainly because of the French people up north. They’re about forty per cent of the population. About thirty per cent are Protestant, fifteen per cent are New Age or Buddhist or Shinto or something like that (because of the hippies), and five per cent are Jewish or Muslim (mostly Muslim, actually). The rest are mostly agnostic; Vermont has surprisingly few out-and-out atheists, possibly because it’s hard not to believe when you’re looking at the snows on the peak of The Chin or the rapids on the Ottaqueechee River.

            One last thing: it’s pronounced ‘vuh-mawnt,’not ‘ver-mawnt’ or ‘ver-mahnt’ or ‘vuh-munt’ or, God forbid, ‘ver-mawnt.’ Unless you say ‘vuh-mawnt,’ we know you’re a tourist. We’ll treat you well—we’re famous for it—but we may not let you in on our little Vermonter in-jokes and secrets.