I chuckle to myself when I read Vermont headlines decrying the exodus of young people from Vermont. Could I belong to an illicit counter-culture of young Vermonters who want to live here? I guess moving back home after four years of college in Massachusetts and three years working in Washington DC means I’ve bucked the trend.
I’m 25, and I grew up in Cabot. When I followed the Connecticut River three hours South to go to college I defied a family tradition. Aside from a few snow-bird great-aunts and -uncles, I was practically the only one in my huge, extended family to live anywhere outside Washington county, let alone Vermont. But I went out into the world anyway and grabbed all the skills and new experiences I could find.
I know I have counter-culture compatriots out there who’ve come back. We all have the same idea: I’ll trade whatever I’m missing in the city for a friendly neighbor and a view of Camel’s Hump.
My Vermont is the place where my great-grandfather and his father are buried, their headstones carved from the same Vermont granite they quarried all their lives. I had to leave to appreciate all this. But how could I not come home?
Cara Cookson, Vermont Law School