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By Kathy Arnold in Essentially America, 2002
An historian once described Vermont as 'Every American's second state'. Wedged into northwestern New England, between Canada and Massachusetts, this is rural America at its most romantic. Say 'Vermont' to an American, and up comes a vision of red barns and covered bridges, clapboard houses and white churches, apples and cheese, maple syrup and ice cream, contented cows and the most famous fall (autumn) scenery in North America. Best of all, the vision is much like the reality.
It doesn't matter which way you point your camera, Vermont is easy on the eye. Considering that only seven other USA states are smaller than Vermont, its scenic variety is surprising. Along its left flank is sausage-shaped Lake Champlain, New England's 150-mile long 'West Coast', with grand views across to New York State. To the east, the Connecticut River forms a natural border with New Hampshire. Running north and south are the Green Mountains, described by French explorer Samuel de Champlain as verts monts back in 1609. Anglicise that, et voilà!
There are a number of right ways to approach Vermont. Drive up from Boston and two hours later, you are in Brattleboro. What was a gritty mill town has had an imaginative facelift, with the old Union Railroad Station now the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. The entire state is a retreat for artists and craftspeople, from painters and potters, to sculptors and glass blowers. In Brattleboro, on the first Friday of the month, you can stroll around 20 galleries and studios, all open, all offering a welcoming drink and artists happy to chat, even if you don't buy.
Just up the road, outside Dummerston, is Naulakha, home of Mr and Mrs Rudyard Kipling a century ago. Here he wrote The Jungle Books and began the Just So stories. Now owned by Britain's Landmark Trust, the lovely old house can be rented, so you can play tennis on the same grass courts as the creator of Mowgli.
Loop round southern Vermont, and you drive though one pretty village after another, all vying for that Kodak moment. Start with Newfane, with its pompous county courthouse, guarded by four grand Greek Revival columns. Also overlooking the huge village green are a church, town hall and two of New England's grandest inns, where rural bliss includes city comforts and food that really can be described as 'gourmet'.
Drive into Grafton and you drive back in time. Thanks to a zillion-dollar restoration project, you can quaff ale at the Old Tavern, picnic by the covered bridge, and watch cheddar cheese-making. It's almost too perfect. The same goes for Weston, with a bandstand on the green, and the folksy Vermont Country Store, another reminder of yesteryear, with bottles of nostalgia next to barrels of sentiment - woollen underwear and herbal remedies, oil lamps and rag rugs. It's back to the future in Eisenhower's America.
Vermont is a great place to get lost. Turn off Route 100 to Route 11, then dip off again to the hamlet of Peru (that's Pee-roo) - little more than a church and the general store that featured in the 1987 film Baby Boom, where Diane Keaton and a baby relocate from Manhattan to Vermont. After September 11, thousands of urban Americans did the same, heading to the country for emotional repairs, to hike deep in the Green Mountain National Forest and cycle the winding back roads. At the end of the day, they sat on porches in rocking chairs and by real log fires.
Not that Vermont is all folksy. Manchester Center is New England's capital of designer outlet shopping, where bargain hunters trawl the mock village for Escada, Versace and Armani. Next door, Manchester Village is dominated by the Equinox, a grand Victorian resort hotel, with 21st-century mod cons, and a classy golf course, with distracting views of Mount Equinox. Back in the olden days, carriages made the trip up to the 3,816-ft summit; today, after paying a toll, you can drive up. Five miles later, you are rewarded with panoramas stretching as far as Canada. On the way down, heed the signposted advice and stop periodically - the smoke you smell could be your brake pads!
Just down the road is Hildene, a summer retreat for Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the President. Tour the 100-year-old mansion to see father Abe's famous stove pipe hat, then saunter round the grounds, where you can watch polo in summer, or try cross-country skiing in winter. Vermonters are keen on the outdoor life. They hike, bike and paddle - and so can you, thanks to well-marked trails and canoe rentals right on the riverbank. As for trout fishing, fly-fishermen the world over know the name Orvis and the Batten Kill River. Founded in Manchester in 1856, the company still make rods and flies for modern-day Izaak Waltons.
Circling back towards Brattleboro, stop in Bennington, with its 306ft limestone Battle Monument, commemorating another one the Redcoats lost back in 1777. Art lovers head for the museum, with its collection of naïve paintings by Grandma Moses, the local farmer's wife who first picked up a brush at 70. Poetry lovers walk to the Old First Church, to pay their respects to America's best-loved poet, Robert Frost. On his grave, the epitaph is one of his classic lines: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world".
Although most visitors follow the obvious north-south routes, the trick is to zigzag east and west, on roads leading up and over the mountains. Take the middle of the state, between Quechee in the east and Rutland in the west. Deep in Quechee Gorge is a crafts centre par excellence in a converted woollen mill. Here, Irishman Simon Pearce makes and sells his superb (and expensive) glass. Nearby is Woodstock, yet another picture-perfect village. The posh inn, the galleries and shops are all meticulously maintained, as are the greens on the scenic but tight little golf course and the slopes of the ski resort, site of the USA's first ski tow in 1934. In between the villages, expect roadside stands in summer and autumn, loaded with ears of corn, bushel baskets of apples and piles of pumpkins.
There are also historic sites. Plymouth, a speck on the map, was the home of America's 30th president, Calvin Coolidge. Dour and direct, he led the country in the 1920s. A typical Vermonter, 'Silent Cal' followed in a long line of independent thinkers. Between 1777 and 1791, Vermont battled for its own autonomy from New York and New Hampshire, as well as from George III.
That passion for individual liberty lives on, with politics taken more seriously than by many Americans - or Brits, for that matter. Enthusiastic supporters of the abolition of slavery and the Union cause in the Civil War, Vermonters voted to fight Germany in two World Wars long before the rest of the USA made up its mind. And they still act on their principles today. In May 2001, Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords stunned President George W Bush by resigning from the party, effectively throwing the US Senate into Democratic Party control. To the delight of his fellow Vermonters, Jeffords is now an Independent. And it was Vermont that first approved of civil unions, as gay marriages are coyly described.
Northern Vermont is the part of the state best known to British visitors. Waterbury is the home of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. After touring the state's No 1 attraction, you get free tasters of flavours old and new, from the Full Vermonty to Cherry Garcia (after Jerry Garcia, their fave rock artist).
Just up the road is Stowe, which vies with Killington and Smugglers' Notch to be the 'most popular' Vermont resort for British skiers and snowboarders. In fact, Jake Burton invented boarding in Vermont, 25 years ago. So, what Wembley was to footballers, Burlington's Burton factory is to boarders. Burlington itself is a pleasant town, with an extra buzz thanks to college students. Most are at the 200-year-old University of Vermont, others are at the New England Culinary Institute. Here, youngsters train as chefs, waiters and hotel managers in working classrooms - NECI Commons bistro, Butler's restaurant and the Inn at Essex.
Down the road from Burlington is the Shelburne Museum. If this were nearer New York City, it would be high on everyone's list of great museums, but this collection of historic buildings, stuffed with art treasures and Americana, is 300 miles from the Big Apple. As well as a schoolhouse, jailhouse and general store, there are Impressionist paintings and antique quilts. At the Maritime Museum in Vergennes is the Philadelphia II, a replica of the gunboat that battled with the British on Lake Champlain in 1776. As for the lake itself, that is a delight, with its coves and ferries, walks and bikeways...and the constant watch for Champ, the local answer to the Loch Ness monster.
Tucked up against the Canadian border is the Northeast Kingdom, thick with forest, sprinkled with lakes and 'far from the madding crowd'. Maple syrup is big up here. Arrive in March, the Sugarin' Season, and look for clouds of steam, billowing from sugar houses, where sap is boiled down for hours to make thick amber syrup. No wonder the 'real thing' is pricey: 30 gallons of sap make just one gallon of syrup! In summer and autumn, go walking from the inns around Caspian Lake and Craftsbury Common; in winter, slip on snowshoes or cross-country skis and glide through glades of birch and pine.
About 50 years ago, summer was Vermont's only tourist season. Colour photography changed all that, with magazine photos attracting the curious and disbelieving, who wanted to see whether the fiery foliage colours were real. And they also discovered events that had not been - and still aren't - 'invented' for tourists: agricultural fairs, complete with ox-pulling, live music and horse shows. Skiing, a recreation for nobs and eccentrics in the 1930s, also took off. But unlike the rest of New England, Vermont has five distinct seasons. Spring is a short burst of daffodils and dogwood, followed by summer, with hot sunshine in July and August. In fall - September and October - Fauvist foliage attracts millions of 'leaf peepers' who ooh and aah their way up and down Route 100. Snow, once the harbinger of Hard Times, is now white gold, providing fun and frolics in some of America's most famous ski resorts. That leaves the fifth season, Mud Month, when the winter snows melt in April, and many country inns close for a well-earned rest.
Vermont is one of America's least-populated states. With 40,000 inhabitants, Burlington is the largest town; Montpelier, America's smallest state capital, is little more than an oversized village. And Vermonters want to keep it that way. No wonder there are bumper stickers reading "Welcome to Vermont - Now go home!" Do not take offence. Vermonters know all about the Green Mountain effect: many who come on holiday fall in love - and stay.
Photo Credit: Tom Seaver copyright 2002
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