East Montpelier
Every state is a state of mind. There are intangibles which make Vermont peculiarly such a state.
Charles Edward Crane, “Let Me Show You Vermont”
As I’m driving down Route 14 from East Montpelier towards home, I have a bit of an epiphany. I suddenly realize that the view out my windshield holds a variety of very different landscape elements—road, homes, mountain, fields, forest, and water—all joined together into one scene.
That scene includes the country road winding under my wheels away from me, the white clapboard farmhouses, the pond in someone’s backyard, the spruce woods that border a cornfield. Each of these elements conjures up associations and memories. Woven together, they make for a visually and emotionally rich landscape.
In short, there’s a lot to look at on this East Montpelier road, and what I see makes me happy.
That got me thinking about the opposite of this rich landscape I’m driving through, the “one element”places that most Americans inhabit. The landscape of a housing development (which only has the "home" element) or those unfortunate many with a long commute on a freeway, who experience only the "road" element, and for hours at a time.
I also think of rural places that are "mono-element,” such as parts of Iowa that are only fileds, with thousands of acres of corn and soybean fields stretching in all directions. That’s a landscape that’s monotonous to the eye—and also damaging to the environment. Parts of the West offer plenty of mountains to look at, but not much in the way of water, homes, or fields. Colorado National Monument is grand, but lacks the human component that humble East Montpelier offers.
There’s a special kind of emotional resonance that’s conjured up the by varied, non-specialized, landscape that I’m seeing out my car window as I drive these back roads of East Montpelier. All the diverse landscape features together make a “whole” I can hold on to in every view. For me, the human and natural richness of this ordinary place is what makes Vermont a unique "state of mind."