(HOST) For years, commentator Willem Lange has been reflecting on the differences between Vermont and New Hampshire – and he thinks he’s found the cause.
(LANGE) The Connecticut River, like a great zipper, binds together Vermont and New Hampshire all the way to the 45th parallel. You’d never guess what a hassle it was, long ago, to fix the international border here. It’s pretty quiet here now on US Route 3. Logging trucks, pick-ups and moose are at least as numerous as automobiles.
The river itself was a popular route for Indians and settlers long before highways. It was also a major warpath for raids to and from Canada. Parties headed north turned west up the White River for Montreal, or to reach the lower St. Lawrence valley, turned left into the Passumpsic River just below where St. Johnsbury is today. Those who stayed with the main river were bound for the Indian villages where the headwaters of the Connecticut and the Androscoggin nearly converge.
On the map, Vermont and New Hampshire resemble two rough wedges driven, tip to butt, between the borders of New York and Maine. Governor Douglas of Vermont, asked for the major differences between the states, says, “New Hampshire is upside down.”
In pursuing my racket as an entertainer, I occasionally refer to New Hampshire as “Vermont without a sense of humor.” I did it once in a First Night appearance up in Burlington. The next Sunday I was ushering in church when a lady approached me with fire in her eye. “My husband and I went to your…performance the other night in Burlington,” she began, “and I want you to know that we took deep umbrage at your characterization of our fair state of New Hampshire!”
“That upset you, did it?” I asked.
“Yes, it did!”
“Well, you see, that’s kind of what I was talking about.”
There’s definitely a difference: profound, but not always obvious. For starters, drive along the river from Brattleboro to Colebrook on one side or the other, and just imbibe the ambiance of the towns and the countryside as you go. You’ll feel it.
I think I’ve hit on the reason: geology. Vermont may appear to have been created by Intelligent Design, but it began life as an underwater continental shelf off the coast of the Adirondack Dome. When the Proto-Eurasian tectonic plate came calling, some 550 million years ago, the collision crumpled the shelf like the front end of a crash-test automobile. Its rocks were metamorphosed, their alkaline minerals concentrated. The result, after millions of years of subsequent erosion, is sweet soil in its valleys. New Hampshire was formed largely by upwelling magma and volcanic action along the line of the ancient collision. It remains to this day the Granite State, its soil acidic. Vermont has farms; New Hampshire water power. One state is rural, the other industrial. Their speech patterns and accents are distinctly different.
But in the North Country, where it may be most obvious, it seems less important. As Norman Maclean has written, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”