town/gown - 1/14/10

Here’s what I love about Middlebury, Vt., in no particular order:

The mountains — skiing, hiking...heck, just looking at them. I have lived in the Champlain valley, framed by mountains, for 20 years and I have yet to get sick of them.

My family — Gang’s all here! I never met a relative I didn’t like.

The potential for small-town embarrassment — the one time I get pulled over by the police, it happens on Main Street. A former English teacher, the woman whose children I babysit, and the kid who taunted me in high school for failing my license test all those times, all witness me crying hysterically and dry-heaving on the officer’s shiny black boots. I love me some character-building.

The Red Kelly trail — It’s the cross-country trail that loops around the golf course. It’s the first place I ever ran for longer than 500 meters, way back in the summer before freshman year of high school. It’s the place I realized that just because I’d been steadily getting worse at soccer for the nine years that I’d been playing, didn’t mean all hope was lost on the athletic front.

Sam and Megan — They’re the kids I babysit. Until I met them, I had an aversion to children. Then I was broke one summer and agreed to a full-time babysitting position. Now I’m all, “don’t be creeped out, I’m just staring at your kid ’cause it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Serioulsy, any day now I’m going to go all Brangelina on you.

Here’s what I love about Middlebury, Vermont, in no particular order, that I have only grown to love through Middlebury College:

Lake Dunmore — I’ve been going to the beach at Lake Dunmore for years, but my relationship with that body of water has grown infinitely more lovely since frequenting its shores with the crew team. Dawn on Lake Dunmore is a whole new level of beauty that I won’t adulterate with mere adjectives.

Scatter my ashes there when I’m gone.

The people — I’ve always been fond of my community members, but since I started writing for The Campus, I’ve had a chance to speak more personally with people that I would never have otherwise encountered. Middlebury is not the sleepy little town I believed it was as an angsty high school student looking to get out. There are things happening here. The people here make things happen.

College students — Sure, I’ve always admired them from afar, but I never actually knew any of ’em. Take it from me; they’re pretty great.

Farms — I never appreciated my agrarian surroundings until someone last year asked me what a silo was. I realize now that my rural roots are not universally understood, or appreciated. So it smells like excrement every once in a while. I like it: it’s a sign of spring.

With that, I will leave you. It’s been great. I hope your Middlebury gives you as much as mine has.