I wrote this essay for a submission request. I believe it was for Sun Magazine. The requested theme was on a found object–for me it was a map of the US 50 States. The essay was rejected and since I don’t like anything to go to waste, I’m resurrecting it and posting it here for your enjoyment.
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The Map to Vermont
After living in Bellingham, Washington for several years, the last thing I wanted to do was to move to another part of the state. However, in 2017, finding a rental in Bellingham was like having the winning lottery ticket. And since a house or an apartment was the equivalent of an endangered species, I had made the mistake of sharing a house with a stranger. I even broke my rule and decided to live with a man.
Needless to say after several months of psychological abuse which I endured, the man pulled up in a U-Haul truck and finally moved out. But this left me with a house I couldn’t rent on my own. This led to me seeking out other cities in Washington State that still had rentals available or were as good as Bellingham. I chose Port Townsend–a charming Victorian seaport on the Peninsula. Only finding housing wasn’t available there for people who weren’t affluent. So, I ended up living with my parents for four years and fostering a German shorthaired pointer for half that time.
It took weeks to clear out a space in the room for me to live. But I didn’t tackle the overstuffed closet until the lockdowns during the pandemic. I had nothing better to do so I sought out different rooms in the house to clean and to clear out the clutter which were results of my mom’s hoarding. While I reached the near bottom of the closet, I found a map of the US in mint condition. I assumed that my nephew bought the map for geology lessons in middle school. I used the map to cover up the holes in the walls that were the results of a gaming console that I had removed.
The only room available in the house had just been vacated by my nephew who moved back to Santa Cruz. But unfortunately, he had crammed the 10 x 10 room with snowboarding gear, computers and gaming devices, books, clothing, that were ensconced in every corner with junk food stuffed under the heater and an old futon stuffed underneath the bed. The closet was stuffed to the brim with not only his belongings, but also possessions that had belonged to several members of the family including records that one would be too embarrassed to say they had listened to back in the 1980s.
And while this was just a US map that any middle school student would have in his possession, the map offered an escape for me. When I looked at it, I envisioned myself in a sprinter van with a traveling buddy crossing the states bordering Canada or perhaps, diving down from Washington State into Oregon and driving along the coast, connecting to the famed Route 66 and then heading up to the Midwest and into the Northeast. We would arrive in Vermont or Maine during the peak of leaf season.
One day when I was indulging my curiosity I asked Google which US state had the most vegan cafes and restaurants. I was surprised when Maine came up. This led me to research Maine, a state I hadn’t thought of much until that moment. The rugged coastline, the moose in the winter, and the vegan cafes caused me to wonder if I could move to Maine. Yes, it was over 3,000 miles away from my current location. And yes, it was an impossible and implausible dream because I didn’t know anything about Maine and I knew no one in that state.
So, I tried the idea out on my friends, “What if I moved to Maine?”
“Why would you move to Maine? Didn’t you know it’s a red state?”
“It also has the most vegans per capita in the city of Portland. It has a beautiful coastline and I’ve not lived near the Atlantic yet, at least not permanently.”
Some of my friends suggested that I move to Vermont instead.
“Why, Vermont?”
“Because,” one friend quipped, “It’s a blue state. Didn’t you say that you supported Senator Bernie Sander’s bid for US President?”
“I did that twice but I’ve never thought of moving to Vermont. I don’t even know anything about the state except that maple syrup, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and Bernie comes from there. Yes, they celebrate four seasons, with a fiery autumn, much like Maine, by the way…”
The problem was the map stared at me from the wall every day . And while it didn’t speak to me in words, it stirred a passion for freedom and for wondering what it would be like to live in another state across the country. The itch wouldn’t go away and the lockdown in a tiny room at my parents’ house didn’t help.
I clung to the idea of moving to Maine even though I knew I would never actually do it. But slowly, Vermont created an itch in my brain that I needed to scratch. Would it hurt to research the Green Mountain State that had been praised by my friends (only one had visited Vermont)? Was it the real Vermont or the concept of Vermont that eventually hooked me? Or was it that map haunting me when I worked on my computer and when I slept in the bed next to it at night.
Would it hurt if I watched videos on the lifestyle and cultures of people in Vermont? I thought I could learn new information but I still wasn’t ready to move to a state where I didn’t know anyone.
While all this was going on, I was taking online classes and becoming certified as an animal communicator, life coach, sound therapist, and a Reiki Master. The more classes I took and the more certification I earned, I noticed the world opening up to me. Now, the idea of moving to the Northeast didn’t seem so farfetched. I had skills and someone would pay for me for using them, so I thought. What if I joined with others and formed a holistic retreat center for dogs? And wouldn’t Vermont with its bucolic hills covered in maple and other leafy trees be the ideal location? Sadly, I didn’t know about the ticks at the time. That would come later when the joke was on me.
So, each morning, I logged onto my computer and gazed at the map which was now taunting me. “You don’t believe that you can travel 3,000 miles without a car or someone to drive you? What will you do with all your belongings?”
I had a bedroom full of my belongings that I removed from a storage unit.
And don’t even think about flying, you’re phobic of airplanes,” so said the map–the map of sirens calling me on a foolish quest.
My research continued with virtually every video waxing on about the beauty and charm of the villages and small cities in Vermont. The state boasted the smallest capitol and that there were no McDonald’s in Montpelier (those were in nearby Barre). At the time, there was an art college and a cooking school. There was footage melting with sentiment showing the happy families who had made Montpelier their home for several generations. And Vermont was the right state to raise their kids. Oh, Vermont could do nothing wrong. I developed a crush on the Northeast gem.
Sure there were the naysayers who lamented about the depressed economy and the amount of Vermonters living below the poverty line. There were news headlines about a drug epidemic, but could it be worse than what Seattle was experiencing? Surely, it wasn’t worse than what San Francisco or Portland, Oregon were dealing with. And there was a headline or two that mentioned a scarcity of rental housing. Wasn’t that happening across the US?
And still the states on the map called to me. “You’re not happy in Washington. The grass is greener in Vermont and there isn’t smoke from the wildfires that had covered the western states each summer and autumn.”
And it’s true outside of the chimney smoke during a Vermont winter (most of the year), Vermont boasted the cleanest air in the US, or at least landed in the top ten states.
Vermont was near to other states I had wanted to visit such as Massachusetts and New York. Plus, I could finally visit Montreal, a dream of mine since the 1976 World Olympic Games.
I had the impression at the time after talking to the director of the Chamber of Commerce in Brattleboro that I could easily bus to Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This, I found out later, wasn’t possible but might have been possible prior to the pandemic. The joke on me was that videos I watched with glowing reviews of Vermont were produced in 2019 and prior to the pandemic.
Eventually, after months of research I decided that I would relocate to Vermont, even though I originally had sought out Maine as my destination. And I was fortunate to have received stimulus money for entrepreneurs which I stuffed into my bank account. I had enough money to relocate to Vermont and I had enough money to pay several months of rent, if I found an apartment right away. Looking back, Vermonters laughed at fools like me.
I moved into a sublet on the south end of Whidbey Island in Washington State where I planned my relocation. But I no longer had the magic map with me because I left it at my parents’ house in the room that had once been my nephew’s room and prior to that, my sister’s room. It didn’t matter. I knew the states I would need to cross to reach my destination–Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, (part of Indiana), Ohio, New York and then to Vermont. That’s the route had I ridden in a sprinter van with a travel buddy.
But I never found a travel buddy. I couldn’t afford the professional drivers. And I wasn’t going to hop on a plane without experiencing a total meltdown. Plus, I didn’t want to wear a face mask for long hours or sit next to someone hacking the entire trip.
So, I booked two trains with Amtrak. I hopped the Empire Builder near Seattle and that 44 hour ride took me through Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and then stopped in Chicago where I spent 6 hours until I boarded the North Shore Limited (for another 22 hours) which sadly left at 9:30 p.m. so I missed seeing all the states except a northwest corner of Pennsylvania, western New York, and parts of Massachusetts prior to embarking in Springfield. The next day I caught the last train only lasting an hour, the Vermonter which traveled through western Massachusetts and dumping me off in Brattleboro on April 6, 2022.
I have to say that after spending months researching Vermont, then several months planning the relocation and then 66 plus hours by train, Brattleboro was a disappointment. The businesses that appeared in the videos stood as landmarks beckoning me to visit, but there wasn’t a journalism job waiting for me as I originally thought. Renting an apartment was again, like buying a winning lottery ticket. And some of the first people to greet me when I disembarked from the train and rattled through its tiny train station (smallest one I’ve ever encountered), were drug addicts and people with severe mental illness. It’s not that I hadn’t been warned about the Retreat Farm (mental hospital) and the non-profits that littered the city but did little to solve the drug problems and crimes that resulted.
I wasn’t going to let my vision of Vermont–the one I watched in videos fade away that quickly. Sure, I had a reality check and so did all the other fools who spent too much time on YouTube learning about the Hallmark holiday movie version of the state. Later, I learned from the people with the relocation cube company that I wasn’t the first person to aim my relocation cube to another state before unpacking it.
I gave Brattleboro too much of a chance, having stayed in the area for around four months. I rented an office for around $200 a month where I practically stayed or at least spent most of my time in between staying at vacation rentals and hotel rooms. I wrote articles for the Brattleboro Reformer and it’s magazine Vermont Country. I wrote for two magazines based out of Keene, New Hampshire even though I had never set foot in that state. And I worked with astrology clients, an animal communication client (one), and I raised money on my YouTube channel to continually pay to keep a roof over my head and gorge on Vermont’s overpriced but super fresh farm-to-the-table food.
In the midst of all that, plus spending time at a off-season religious retreat center near Wilmington and then eventually moving to Montpelier, where I only stayed for five weeks, I caught Lyme disease.
Today, I wonder about that magical map. Was it a blessing or a curse? When I left Washington State I was in relatively good health. I had $20K in my bank account which Vermont would consume later. I had been encouraged by most people to pursue my dreams and relocate to Vermont. But I wonder if anyone really believed I would or could do it. I didn’t think I would and I had to pinch myself when I landed in Brattleboro, which wasn’t at all like the Land of Munchkins which I wrote about in my memoir on the housing plight in Vermont.
I had been warned by a psychic in Washington State not to relocate to Vermont. “It will be rough and you could end up homeless, but your friend will help you.”
At the time, I wondered about this mysterious friend. I made many friends in Vermont and there were both visible and invisible hands that helped me on my Quixotic quest. My experience in Vermont were both out-of-this-world fantastic and tragic. I’m sure in time I’ll recover from Lyme and if I publish my books, I’ll replace the money I lost.
I end with the saying, nothing ventured, nothing gained. That’s the message of the magical map and the desire for freedom that crept into my soul during the 2020 lockdowns. All maps lead us to somewhere, but that map didn’t guide me back home.
I’m in Pittsburgh until the end of June when I’ll be doing another road trip, this time to Washington State. I’m raising the money through crowd funding. If you would like to help this writer return home, please donate. Thank you.
belleauthor (Patricia Herlevi) 