Recently, outside the post office in Norwich, I heard the anguished cry of a stranger.
Well, technically, I saw it.
On a car with New York State plates was a single bumper sticker. It had nothing to do with politics, sports or whether baby was on board.
“Misplaced Vermonter” it said, with an outline of the Green Mountain State.
Those two words told me all I needed to know about the owner of the car; if he or she had been nearby, we would have hugged.
Perhaps the sticker struck such a strong note because I know the naked longing of being far from my homeland. The past few years, it was rural Burgundy, France. Before that, I had been in Boston for 10 years following stints in Paris, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. For more than two decades, my only real time in Vermont — other than weekends at my parents’ house — was a spell in Middlebury. And yet, throughout my peripatetic adventures, Vermont was always there, calling to me. She is like a first love: No matter where life takes you, you never fully forget.
When I started telling people that my family and I were moving back to the Upper Valley, a lot of folks offered thoughts on where to find housing. New Hampshire residents were undiscerning in their advice, suggesting towns on both sides of the river. Vermonters, on the other hand, exclusively suggested towns west of Ledyard Bridge. They knew where we were headed.
Soon after I got back, I asked a woman who had also just moved here with her family why she chose Norwich over Hanover or elsewhere. She kind of laughed and said, “Well, I’m a fifth-generation Vermonter.” In other words, there was no choice. Her Vermontness is like what a lot of people say about the music of one of the world’s great bands: “If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.”
Of course, like many people living in the Upper Valley, I have always split my time between Vermont and New Hampshire, bouncing back and forth for school, work, play and friendship. There are many here among us who feel that life in the two states is essentially the same. After all, only a few letters separate Bradford from Orford or Corinth from Cornish. Both states are in the Northeast with similar climates. The two states rank 45th and 46th in total area, with Vermont possessing 267 additional square miles. They each have a single area code and all zipcodes start with the same two numbers: 03 in New Hampshire and 05 in Vermont.
But, when you dig underneath the surface, real differences emerge. Whereas Vermont has 626,000 people, the fewest of any state save Wyoming, New Hampshire crams more than twice as many souls into those same roughly 9,000 square miles. To the Vermonter’s eye, New Hampshire is upside down, with the fat part stuffed down by Massachusetts, a bloated suburb of Boston, while Vermont’s main girth boasts the state’s most spectacular scenery and wilderness.
Naturally, the differences go much deeper than demographics or geography. But now is not the time for a full discussion of Vermont’s distinct advantages over New Hampshire. It seems gratuitous, in these divisive days, to contrast the solemn nobility of Vermont’s civic engagement — best captured in Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech painting — with the oddly menacing battle cry of “Live Free or Die!” During a moment of national uncertainty, we mustn’t resort to silly potshots, noting that Vermont has better cheddar and grade A Grade A. In this period of anxiety, why bother focusing on the shallow reality that the only reason anyone moves to New Hampshire is for lower taxes? In the midst of tumult, we shall not dwell on which state has more billboards. Nor shall we compare the beauty of the two Manchesters, or speculate why popular culture idealizes the Green Mountain State more than her neighbor to the east (Pollyanna herself lived in Vermont). What good does it do us as a people to ask which state’s leaders have done more to foster a productive national discussion: Jeffords, Dean and Sanders, or those pillars of principle, Kelly “I’m-voting-for-him-but-not-endorsing-him” Ayotte, Scott “Really, I’m From Here” Brown, and Winnipesaukee Willard (aka Mitt Romney)?
No, I say, let us not pay attention to these examples of Vermont’s superiority, true and obvious though they may be. (For proof, hum a few bars of Moonlight in New Hampshire.) Instead, let us return to what unites us: cars. I know a guy who grew up in western Upper Valley. After many moons away from the area, he returned not long ago and now lives with his family just east of Daniel Webster’s alma mater. He is a modern-day Robert Frost, at home in both states. He could have opted for a similar bumper sticker to that New York resident. But the pull and the pride of his home state required something a bit more drastic. So he ordered himself a custom license plate from the DMV in Concord. It has two letters on it, an indelible abbreviation. It is a message to everyone who speaks 802: He is one of us.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.