The Beckoning Country
Back in the 1960s, Vermont’s economic development officials launched a marketing campaign called “The Beckoning Country.’’
Promoted in New York City and Boston bus stations, the campaign marketed Vermont’s quality of life to city dwellers looking for an escape. Vermont back then was a foreign and enchanting landscape. It seemed to snow every day. A ski lift ticket was $8. It was, and still is, a place filled with fresh air and water, hiking, biking, and pastoral scenery that inspired a yearning for the authentic, for the real.
The other reality was that Vermont could be a barren place that struggled to fill its own schools and grow an economy for its people. This is the reality the “Beckoning Country” campaign was designed to combat.
The campaign brought hundreds of thousands of people to a place that had skipped - for the most part - the industrial revolution. With this influx of people Vermont began to grow. By the mid-60s, the ski industry had taken hold. World War II vets and entrepreneurs began developing the Green Mountains into resorts. Thousands - including my family - made the ski trip from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut on Friday night only to return home late Sunday in time for the next day of school.
But many of the outsiders didn’t return. They stayed behind, forsaking the city to make a new life in the country. These city refugees built the modern Vermont with its liberal politics, environmental ethic and strong attachment to all things small.
The campaign had worked.
And now the Beckoning Country beckons again, in a far darker, less happy way. Now Vermont beckons as a refuge.
Suddenly, America looks like a failed state. Our Congress is gridlocked and dominated by corporate money. Our executive branch is defanged and powerless to limit social media platforms from influencing our elections. The largely corporate press, once looked to for guidance and information, has now broken into small factions, each outlet serving its own readers and viewers, regardless of the impact on the public.
Accustomed to an honest government we can trust, Vermonters have watched as armed riotous traitors stormed the U.S. Capitol and threatened to murder the Vice President if he didn’t sabotage the presidential election. We watched one political party go completely off the rails, led by a mendacious con-man who placed his own fortunes over the public trust. And now we watch as the U.S. Supreme Court, once a bastion of respect, rebuilt in the image of the Republican Party, doles out rulings at complete odds with the majority will of the people.
And yet Vermont resists this state of affairs. It is now a sanctuary from a crazy world. A sanctuary that takes several forms. We welcome climate refugees tired of wildfires, lack of water and weather shocks. We welcome COVID refugees looking for common-sense school policies instead of fighting over masks, not to mention silly arguments over curriculum. We welcome housing refugees who can no longer afford to buy or own a house in the suburbs. We welcome refugees from war, looking for freedom and a new start. We welcome refugees looking for a sane lifestyle with clean air and water, a quality school, a sense of place and scale, where they personally know their elected officials and can go for a hike within five minutes of their home.
And perhaps most pressing of all, we will welcome those fleeing the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.
Welcome to the new Beckoning Country.
A realtor friend told me that after the abortion decision, she received six phone inquiries in one day about homes for sale in Vermont.
The court’s recent rulings to allow virtually unrestricted gun possession, prevent the EPA from regulating smokestack emissions and treating women like escaped slaves in the 1800s will drive people to places like Vermont.
While the Roe decision triggered anti-abortion laws in many states and counting, Vermont is going the other way. We are in the midst of amending our Constitution to guarantee reproductive rights. And women all over the country will be sent a message that they can come to Vermont for abortion care.
These refugees can feel safe because they know our political leaders, including a Republican governor, will back them up.
Indeed, the office of Vermont’s attorney general is suddenly very important. Both Democratic candidates put forth announcements promising to protect health care providers in Vermont and those coming to Vermont to seek care.
For years, an aging Vermont has struggled to stem the tide of citizens leaving the state for better jobs and opportunity. We even passed legislation to entice newcomers with cash if they came here to start a business. But we may have just discovered that our potent mix of good government, liberal politics, small business and beautiful landscapes of farms and tolerance are the right mixture for another era of the Beckoning Country.
America’s dystopia may just be Vermont’s elixir. We should be so lucky.
