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!