National Geographic Recognizes the Northeast Kingdom
| by Scott Wheeler It’s amazing to think that the land I have called home my entire life has been chosen as one of the top U.S. travel destinations by National Geographic magazine for Geotourism program. |
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| Although I’m a bit amazed by the honor bestowed upon the Northeast Kingdom by National Geographic, in other ways, it doesn’t surprise me. After all, the Kingdom with its working landscape is a beautiful, rural part of an otherwise urbanized section of the country. Talk to most people, longtime locals and newcomers, and many of them will tell you—many of them proudly, others in an obvious tone of disappointment—the Kingdom is in the middle of nowhere, or in other words, in the “sticks.” I am proud to call the Northeast Kingdom my home. At times I might complain about the rather inclement weather and short seasons but I suspect that like my ancestors before me, in time my final resting place will probably be under six feet of Northeast Kingdom soil. |
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| In reality, is the Kingdom really in the middle of nowhere? It really doesn’t take much more than a glance at a map to see that the idea of our being in the middle of a vast wilderness is but an illusion. Just to our north is a first class city—Montreal, Quebec. Also, much smaller, but very vibrant, is the community of Sherbrooke, Quebec. A three-plus hour drive south will take travelers to such major urban centers as Holyoke, Springfield, Cape Cod, and Boston, Massachusetts. A bit further is Hartford, Connecticut. New York City is less than a day’s drive. Even the Burlington, Vermont, region is becoming a metropolitan area, at least on a Vermont scale. I view the Northeast Kingdom as more of a forested hill-covered “island,” almost a world in its own, in the middle of an increasingly urbanized region of the country.
I often wonder why my ancestors chose to live in this area—the northernmost reaches of Vermont. The climate is far from ideal. The hilly landscape and short growing seasons aren’t the best for farming. But there was something here that attracted my ancestors—French, English, and Abenaki. My Abenaki ancestors were likely here because, after all, the region was at the heart of the Abenaki homeland. I doubt that I’ll ever know what the catalyst was for my European ancestors to move to a region where other people didn’t dare or want to venture. I suspect that like other European settlers, my ancestors settled here for several reasons. The power generated by the flowing streams provided industrial opportunities, and the forests were filled with a natural resource, trees. There was also open land for farming. Farms sprang up along the hillsides farmed by people who hoped to make a livelihood from the land. Many of these hillside farms have long ago fallen victim to time and their ruins are shrouded in a victorious forest. If my ancestors were anything like me, at least part of the reason they came here, and decided to stay, was because of the elbow room for privacy and freedom, a land where they could be themselves.In recognizing the Northeast Kingdom, National Geographic will, I hope, show the Northeast Kingdom as I know it, and as my ancestors knew it, and as many other people—both generational Kingdomites and relatively new pioneers to the region—know and appreciate it: as a working landscape where people utilize the land and respect it at the same time.
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