First Flatlander Response

If you're new to this project please read: Flatlanders' Vermont, and if you'd like to participate, please respond to Flatlanders' Questionnaire 1 (both below).

Celia Schneider of Castleton, a woman whose vibrant personailty seems indicative of many who left more profitable and many ways more predictable lives to re-root their faimilies-- and their own creative selves-- in the lush, rough, but more rewarding world-- in all ways but monetarily-- of Vermont.

Here's her first impressions:

1. When, from where and why did you move to Vermont? We moved to VT because my husband was a Forester and there were not a lot of jobs in that field in NJ. He also knew this area from coming to Lake Dunmore in the summers as a child. His family was also moving here as well.
2. If your Move to Vermont were a movie, describe the opening scenes and images as the credits flash across the screen. The first scene would be of a young woman excited and then in the very next moment that look of wondering what she got herself into. The next scene would be her crying.
3. List 5 first impressions of Vermont. Beautiful, peaceful, quiet, scary and overwhelming.
4. Describe the first problem you encountered and how you coped or overcame it. When we first moved here we lived in Brandon and I did not have a job at the time. I had been married a year and we moved into my -in-laws house. That says it all. I don’t remember any first problem, it was more adjusting to a new way a life.
5. Tell the most compelling story of those first weeks in Vermont-- could be as simple aswatching your kids hunt for tadpoles, drawing your first landscape, being befriended orostracized... whatever comes to mind most boldly. I’ll think about this one!

Celia, I'd be curious to hear more of those first months with the in-laws: where (or more on the temperament of the town), why, how long. Can you recount one incident that conveys that living situation and the cast of characters.We all play different roles in our families at different times: what was yours?

Thanks for responding, look forward to reading more of those early years!!
----- Original Message -----

Flatlanders' Questionnaire 1

Thanks to all of you fellow flatlanders who showed enthusiasm for the project. (If you're new to this project, you can read the previous entry Flatlanders' Vermont.) While most of us
are solid individualists, who seemed to be making a very singular choice to leave our city lives to homestead in Vermont, in retrospect I see we came in a wave, all pushing northward for a saner life. Many of us are artists and educators, many of us parents, all of us have had unique experiences which I'm eager to have us share.

Each week I will post between 3-5 questions to mull over. Answer any or all in any order, and you can post your initial responses as comments (click on comments below his blog entry) or if you prefer you can email them to me at ebenreilly@aol.com.

This is our first leisurely phase-- just sharing our perceptions. Based on our responses we will devise a Flatlander Questionnaire which we'll print and distribute to any individual or family who then feels they'd like to contribute to the book.

1. When, from where and why did you move to Vermont?
2. If your Move to Vermont were a movie, describe the opening scenes and images as the credits flash across the screen.
3. List 5 first impressions of Vermont.
4. Describe the first problem you encountered and how you coped or overcame it.
5. Tell the most compelling story of those first weeks in Vermont-- could be as simple as
watching your kids hunt for tadpoles, drawing your first landscape, being befriended or
ostracized... whatever comes to mind most boldly.

FLATLANDERS' VERMONT

On Saturday Moriah and I turned out of the driveway onto Route 30 North on our way to Burlington to meet Margot Harrison, the book/film reviewer for Seven Days, to be followed
by a stop in Waitsfield for a reading of Crosswords to be staged by the Valley Players of Waitsfield.

Following the curves in the road, enjoying the muted browns, greens and lackluster shades of yellow and orange-- a range of color I much prefer to the brash reds and golds of peak season-- I had a Vermont flashback of a hundred images of my own family's past decade in Vermont.

Coming when the twins were two and Ben five to literally escape the gun play in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn (and the screaming teachers at the woeful public school to which Ben had been assigned), we felt we had stepped back in time.

Our first stop was pancakes at the dimly lit and dusty cafe in Fairhaven, where back then all five of us fit into the narrow wooden booth. Later that morning we arrived at a friend's old farmhouse in Hubbardton, where Ben found his first salamander, and when a lightening storm burnt out our water pump, I bathed all three in the stream that ran outside our rickety bedroom windows.

And that was just the first clip of a full hour of Vermont footage in my brain.

Later speaking to Margot, whose mom had transplanted her own small family from Manhattan to Saint Johnsbury where she taught at the college, I became more convinced that there are
striking similarities to the experience of all Flatlanders. We came like immigrants set on changing our lives, and many of us raised our children-- making harsh financial compromises-- for the frugal, but better life we made here for our families.

So I told Margot about an idea for a book, which after compiling hundreds of interviews with friends and neighbors, would explore the similarities of our experiences, our Vermont.

Later when I spoke with my sister-in-law Julie Merwin, a writer herself, of my idea for the book, she had an idea of her own, a Flatlanders' Cookbook, to show the vast diversity of newcomers to this state. And then later in the day, when I ran the idea by my friend Chris Brown, artist/yoga teacher, she enthusiastically took up the challenge and will help design the questionnaire that by next week we will post on this blog and send off to our Flatlander friends and neighbors to begin our book: Flatlanders' Vermont.

I'm excited about the project and will write more of our literary adventure in coming weeks.
Hope you join us!