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AaronMichaelGordon.com: Voice of Degeneration

On "Becoming A Vermonter."

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This entry was posted on 5/28/2008 4:21 PM and is filed under Politics, Environment, Business, URBAN PLANNING, Humor, Global.

OK, so I journeyed back to Vermont for my second time as an adult (went skiing as a child in Killington.) And now I can officially say that I simply must move there someday. When I came up in the winter, I felt the love...but I was worried that 'snowfall lust' was marring my judgement. After all, it snowed an absurdly small amount in the District this year, and thus I was robbed of the only damn positive that goes with freezing weather. 

Hey, I'm a recovering Floridian. If it's gonna be cold, it better fucking snow.

Alas, aside from the chronic icing of the streets (and my chronic slippage on the aforementioned ice,) it only snowed three pitiful times this winter. Imagine my childlike delight, then, upon encountering the wonderland of white in the mountains of Vermont! Actually, you don't have to imagine, as I already waxed poetic about the beauty. But...spring in DC has been beautiful. The cherry blossoms intermingled with the smog to make the city fragrant and inviting again. Sinewy, sweaty teams of rowers churn up the Potomac as I walk to work. Shit, they just opened a Metro-accesible Target, so I no longer have to traverse into cracktown Maryland for underwear, socks and hair gel. What's not to love? How could Vermont compete with my Spring Fling in DC?

Quite well, actually. On this trip, I got to see more of the region and the people that call Vermont home. I stared in awe at a multi-story waterfall, carving sculpture into the mountainside. I was surrounded by trees that scraped each other as they scraped the sky...a carpet of fifty-foot tall foilage, laying grace to the mountain. Damnit, I fell in love again!

As you can imagine, this was not in the plan. I'm pretty much a pavement-pusher. I was raised in the mass of sprawl that is South Florida. I've chosen to live in cities, from Atlanta to Washington. I'm no stranger to the pleasures of the mall, although I prefer the densely packed street of shops and cafes to the sterile center of shops. My life is basically like "Sex and the City." Without the sex.

Moreover, it's not that I haven't been thrust into nature before, either. My family took an ill-advised, but quite humorous trek into Florida's Everglades. I've been to Colorado and Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I went to sleepaway camp...but there's something about Vermont that sets it apart. It's like I feel this inevitable pull from the state itself...as if the ground is gently wrapping around my legs, encouraging me to become a part of it all...whatever this "it" is.

Mind you, I'm not leaving DC for awhile, partially because nobody really needs a copywriter and brand specialist in Vermont, partially because I just can't imagine my life as the 'Kitchen Witch Handcrafter.' (and yeah, that's totally my 'sell to tourists' idea for Vermonting it,) and partially because I really adore the District. There's a special energy here as well, as millions of people scurry around architectual gemstones on their way to monument or martini. DC is ideal for my urban self, my comsopolitan creation, my player in the game of modern life.

But Vermont is where my actual self lives and thrives...where the inner hippie I chloroformed and threw into the closet all those many years ago (10 years, to be precise,) comes out to see the beauty in anything and everything. It's where I feel Vermont-envy towards the natives who populate it's shires, towns and streams. I just get to visit...they get to live it.

Vermont has retained its natural beauty specifically because Vermonters decided that modern development was ugly, wasteful and worthless. The roads are right-sized. The buildings are intimate and liveable. And there's not a billboard to be seen. Best of all, right next door is an example of what not to do with your environment: New Hampshire. 

I'm sure that residents of the Granite State will disagree, but from about the middle of New Hampshire down into the glut of Greater Boston, the stunning landscape has been turned into 'America.' Wide streets. Strip malls. Plastic signs announcing yet another Burger King. Even in the mountains, it kind of looked like Florida. Or Atlanta. Or anywhere that's been turned into nowhere by our collective refusal to maintain separation of city and country.

Vermont does, and that's why it's so damn gorgeous. The town doesn't stretch into the 'burbs...because there aren't any. It's just town and country, city and country, country and country. You'd think the paving of Florida would have awakened this environmentalist in me...but 'natural-state-Florida' is pretty damn ugly. Flat, piss-warm-water beaches fold into flat-piss-ugly swampland. Florida needs architecture, imported palm trees, and landscaped medians to add the beauty. If you don't beleive this, go visit Tampa. No style, no landscaping...just suburban sprawl done on the cheap. Ugly...and much less developed than Miami. Then go see The Magic City. Yeah, it sprawls out from the core...but it's damn sexy whilst doing it!

That's what so sad about New Hampshire: it could look like Vermont! Instead, it kind of looks like Tampa...and that's so not a compliment. And it's why I could never see New Hampshire again and be fine. I already live in a city...why would I choose to go and play in your poor approximation of one? Worse, why would I play in suburbia-Northeast, when South Florida has already perfected the form? Grow a damn median, y'all!

Thank goodness we only spent a scant, few moments on that side of the fence. But that got me to thinking about my future life in Vermont. Would I be willing to leave all the urban/suburban comforts behind, trading off the convenience of insta-commerce for the infusion of beauty and community? It's kind of a tough question to answer, especially from one who has been raised in the sprawl. New Hampshire clearly answered 'no,' and that's why they have many Wal-Marts, Burger Kings, and six-lane "local roads." They took "somewhere" and made it "everywhere." And "nowhere." (Thanks, James Howard Kunstler.)

So...I thought about it, because I can't live in "nowhere" ever again. And yet, I still want to go shopping, to the museums, the bars and the streets. So no. As of today, I am officially not ready to give up the joys of the city for the splendor of Vermont. And I'm not willing to desecrate Vermont with malls full of crap that I can buy, just so I can live a sub-urban existence. Less than a city...and much less than the countryside it once was.

More than that, I'd step up to the plate and protect Vermont from people who desire those very same malls and shops and 'Power Strip Centers,' and will drag them to Vermont, should they move...blissfully unaware that the denuded landscape is a direct result of their refusal to compromise: space and noise in the city...or isolation in the country. You try and have it both ways...and it ends up no ways.  

So, I'd protect Vermont from that. Which makes me a Vermonter. And in a few years, when I'm ready...I'll leave it all behind and protect it from within, so that I'll never be without...
...the endless sky.
...the soaring mountains.
...the soulful people.
...the true self beneath the mask.

Damn...when am I going up there again?

I have this great idea to sell Kitchen Witches to Massholes...and all I need is...

...clearly, therapy. Or a moving truck.

See you soon, pretty lady.
 

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