What It Means to Be a VTer
What it Means to be a Vermonter
By Abby Emmons
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10
To me, being a Vermonter is and does and always has meant many things. It means taking pride in living in the only state in the United States of America that doesn’t have billboards. It means mocking tourists for driving too slowly, getting lost and taking too many pictures… haven’t they ever seen a chicken before? It means drinking ice-cold lemonade in the summer, fresh apple cider in the fall, hot chocolate in the winter and maple syrup in the spring. It means enjoying hay season even though there are a million other things you’d rather be doing than getting hay chaff down your shirt and dust up your nose. It means getting arrested for whistling underwater… “I didn’t know that was illegal! I swear!” It means going on wild horseback riding adventures in the woods and not coming back until after dark. It means approaching life head on and never taking anything too seriously. It means sitting out on the porch at sunset during peak foliage and watching the last lingering rays light up the leaves and create the illusion of a forest fire. It means eight months of what feels like winter and four months of whatever’s left. It means never having to worry about mowing your lawn because the cows do it for you. It means sitting next to the fire on a freezing winters night wrapped up in blankets and watching old reruns of “I Love Lucy”. It means going over the river and through the woods to cut your own Christmas tree and stopping at Grandma’s for cookies on the way home. It means waking up on Monday Morning and seeing that it snowed three feet since Sunday night and watching channel 31 to see if school’s cancelled. It means five seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and mud season. It means hiking up the tallest nearby peak to get the best cell service. It means not caring that the state bird is the mosquito and the state flower is the satellite dish. It means having tractor races in the fall and lawnmower races in the summer. It means seeing all the locals with “Got Milk” and “Gut Deer” bumper stickers on their cars. It means driving a Subaru- “no, that’s not dirt, that’s an off-white paint finish…” It means being the only state in the United States to not have a Walmart until 1996. It means knowing that your supply of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is never going to run out. It means looking out into a blizzard and pondering over the theory ‘No two snowflakes are alike’. It means growing up watching PBS and very little of anything else. Being a Vermonter means a lot of things, but all of those little definitions add up to one sole word… UNIQUE.