Everybody needs the promise of a place to think, a place to breathe, a place to simply be. My family's escape has always been the Green Mountain State—Windham, Vermont: population 328. Although I wouldn’t trade my North Fork upbringing for the world, I am so lucky to have had Vermont there to raise me throughout the winters of my life. I will always treasure the altitudes that decluttered my brain, gifting me with a Green Mountain state of mind.
As fall break approaches and I prepare for a much-needed retreat to the mountains, I can’t help but thank the place that has taught me so much—about nature, about life, about myself.
Thank you, Vermont, for unveiling the beauty in simplicity. Thank you for reminding me that this thing we call social media is anything but social, for proving to me that sometimes we must disconnect from technology in order to connect with what truly matters. Thank you for stripping my winters of Wi-Fi and cable, for coaxing me to turn to nature and true human connection. Thank you for teaching me that there is always something to do besides stare at an iPhone screen—even if that something is simply closing your eyes and listening to the world around you. Not clicks and beeps and double taps, but cheeping swallows and rustling birches and babbling brooks. Real sounds—sounds that mean life, not enslavement to social media. Because unlike television screens, nature doesn’t chatter asininely. Rather, each sound it makes—the whisper of cattails, the crackling of a flame—has inconceivable meaning. Thank you, Vermont, for having me tune into this glorious song. I vow to remain a lifelong listener.
Vermont, you have given me some of the purest, most magical memories of my life. Watching bonfire plumes sashay past the Man in the Mountain’s legions of evergreens, en route to court Alpha Centauri. Pressing my nose to the frosted windowpane as wild turkey made their daily scuttle across the backyard. Listening from the front stoop of the local ranch as horses neighed at the pixie dust-streaked Fourth of July sky. Rattling branches and laughing as an avalanche of apples rained down on me—learning that nature does not discriminate; it will always provide. And later: biting into a slice of fresh apple pie and not feeling the urge to snap a photo and share the moment with anyone, because this was my bounty; I'd baked it for me. Building an igloo and returning the next morning only to find it christened with bear tracks—discovering, wide-eyed, that there are creatures out there that I may never, ever meet, but that they, too, call this Earth home. Peeking in on the local church's square dance night and seeing, among the twangs and tambourines, the unabashed pirouetting of something so effortless, so free. Walking in circles on winding woodland trails only to realize that sometimes, getting lost is life’s greatest adventure.
