Not in Our Vermont
Big-boxes for the Green Mountains?
BY RICHARD TODD
According to the Census Bureau, Vermont, though only
about a five-hour drive from New York City, qualifies
as the most rural state in the country. That may surprise
someone from South Dakota, but the definition depends
on the relative presence of cities of a certain size,
and Vermont essentially doesn't have cities. Its capital,
Montpelier,
is a town of only 8,000 people, with its little gold-domed
capitol building sitting on Main Street as approachable
as if it were the YMCA. Montpelier—a trivia fact—is
the one state capital in the nation that lacks a McDonald's
franchise. Only Burlington,
home of the University of Vermont, comes close to urban
dimensions, and its population is just 40,000.
If you're of a certain turn of
mind, Vermont can make you oddly melancholy: It reminds
you of what much of our country has lost. The state
remains remarkably beautiful and sparsely settled.
With only about 600,000 citizens, a still viable agricultural
community, and much rugged, forested terrain, it largely
preserves a traditional landscape of tight-knit towns
and open land. Life on this scale has its effects
on people. I don't suppose one can impute any genetic
virtue to Vermonters—unless tolerance for extreme
cold counts—but there is an admirable egalitarian
ethos about the place. Probably it has a quite practical
source: You are likely to know your neighbor, and
you can be sure your neighbor knows you.
I live in Massachusetts not far from the Vermont border,
and have for some time, and so I'm no stranger
to the state, but during the course of some recent
visits there, I got a fresh sense of just what a close
and organic society it is. By that I don't mean
that everyone thinks alike, but that almost everyone
seems to have a vested interest in Vermont as a place
apart. Burlington is home to a wonderfully cranky
fellow named Thomas Naylor who likes to warn against
the "Americanization of Vermont." He's
at the forefront of a movement to secede from the
Union and form the Second Vermont Republic. His fellow
citizens tend to take this as a joke, of course—but
here's the point: It's not absurd.
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