After over two months this summer at the Gazette, I would love to share some closing words and gratitude. Firstly, I’d like to thank UVM for the opportunity to live and work in Craftsbury and Paul and the entire Gazette team for teaching me the subtle styles of the paper while putting up with me.
As a UVM student from a major metropolitan city, who has barely so much as driven through rural towns, when I found out I would be working at a non-profit newspaper with one editor and one writer in rural Vermont this summer, I was less than excited. I don’t love Burlington. It’s a town that constricts you. It lacks the charm of a medium town, despite being one, and instead embraces the concrete, construction, trashed streets and general unrest of a city thrice its size. Maybe getting out of Burlington for the summer could be good, I told myself.
Soon, I found myself unpacking in a new home at Sterling College, as smells of animals and compost wafted into my windows.
Small town is a deceiving term. If I were to use a hundred words to describe the Northeast Kingdom, none of them would come close to small. Expansive, loving, diverse, even divine. When one drives, it feels as though you go and never stop, and that the hills will just keep rolling ahead. There is no end nor beginning.
With every local story I have gone to cover, whether it’s in Wolcott or Greensboro Bend or Craftsbury, families have surrounded me. Food is laid out on tables. A guitarist or band plays live, and children toss balls in the field.
More importantly, there is an overwhelming air of welcoming and of strength. Finding myself in communities where I know no one, and am quite frankly very clearly an outsider, has been intimidating, but I have learned so much from these communities. They can and will better their home, they are sure of it.
I am now a proud regular at the Genny, and have brought groups of my friends up from Burlington to escape to the cool waters of Caspian Lake and the zany shows at Bread and Puppet. They love it every time.
I see your strength everywhere I go, and I am proud to call this place my home, however brief my time. Out here, nearly every day is a free community dinner. The sun is bright, and the green of the maples blooming even brighter. Food is a right, and in abundance for all. No one goes forgotten. It’s all we need. Thank you, Northeast Kingdom, the most resilient place in the world. I hope to see you again soon, though maybe not in the wintertime.
Alex Strand, UVM Intern
Alex Strand
Alex Strand is a Hardwick Gazette reporting intern for this summer. She is a rising junior at the University of Vermont studying English and Psychology. She is from Boston, MA, but has begun to fall in love with the Northeast Kingdom. In her free time, she likes reading, swimming and canoe tripping.
What a lovely tribute! Thanks for sharing your experience!