81 VERMONT (THE QUIET AMERICA)
Just outside the small-town quaintness of Stowe, Vermont, is a brazen, light-filled building that oozes fun vibes. Welcome to The Alchemist, the legendary Vermont craft brewery that is renowned for its Heady Topper IPA, regularly named one of the world’s best beers, and most of which is only available within 50 kilometres of where it is made.
Inside, irreverent art is splashed around everywhere, beer cans are rotating on the conveyor belt to the sounds of blaring indie pop music, and folks of all ages are sampling the brews on tap. Even the visiting dogs have smiles on their faces.
“Vermont is such a beautiful, easy, slow-living kind of place with good values. You eat and drink so well with all the local organic meat and produce, cream-top milk, artisanal cheese and, yes, great beer,” says co-owner Jen Kimmich. “It’s small scale, with local businesses supporting local farmers.” Even better, she adds, “no one is telling you how to think or what to do. Vermonters live and let live. There’s a long history of civil liberties in this part of the world.”
Given the Twitter feeds and television news headlines that blare around the world, it’s easy to get caught up in the blitz of Trump America and its perverse treatment of the truth. Vermont offers an alternative vision: a place where people care about each other, their community and their environment, and where the values are rock solid no matter what the overall political situation might be.
Interestingly, despite all the hysterical sound bites, the values-in-action that Vermont represents are embodied by all kinds of people here, from Brooklyn transplant, Vermont senator and possible presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to prominent Republican families, such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and even the descendants of Abraham Lincoln.
Located south of Quebec, and bordered by New Hampshire, New York State and Massachusetts, Vermont is landlocked, but its long Lake Champlain might as well be the sea, with its various canals linking with New York’s Hudson River and Quebec’s Saint Lawrence River. Three-quarters of the Green Mountain State is forested. In fact, Vermont has more maple trees than people, which means oceans of syrup and spectacular autumn colours.
It has villages with white-steepled churches and green farmland dotted with cows,
