Robin Allen LaPlante and her husband lived outside Boston and vacationed in Vermont for years, with hopes of one day relocating here. That day came in 2018, when the couple got a job at a nonprofit in Greensboro, and they moved to the Northeast Kingdom with their new baby.
Robin grew up in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, and moving to Vermont was a learning curve. She had never heard of snow pants until that first winter in Vermont.
Seven years later, Robin and her family are happily settled in Orleans. She took reporter Erica Heilman for a drive around the Kingdom. They talked about what it was like to adjust to this new place, and some of what she’s learned — starting with her very first night in Vermont.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Robin Allen LaPlante: It's a white farmhouse that we were renting, and we pull up at night in this U-haul. And it's like, ‘Oh, we've made it! This is beautiful!’ Everything was starting to bloom. But then the next morning I woke up and there was, like, a buzzing sound on the windows. And I had no idea what it was. And I came out of the room that we were staying in and there were just flies all over the window. And it suddenly went from, like, the end of a wonderful story to the beginning of a horror film.
Erica Heilman: Like The Amityville Horror movie.
Robin Allen LaPlante: Yeah. I was like, ‘Is there a body somewhere?’ I was, like, ready to pack up.
Erica Heilman: The flies made you feel that way?
Robin Allen LaPlante: It was covered with cluster flies. Like, when I say it was covered, you couldn't see the sun through the window. And they were buzzing. And I was sure that there was something very wrong.
"I'm like the street flatlander. And that's fine with me. I'm not from here. My family hasn't been from here, but I choose to be here. I made a choice to come here. And I make a choice to stay here because I love it. And I think that choice matters almost as much as being from here."Robin Allen LaPlante
Erica Heilman: Are there places that you thought were ugly when you first came that look different to you now?
Robin Allen LaPlante: Ugly. There are houses where there's lots of, like, junker cars in the lawn, and like — here we go!
Here's a car on the side of the road. Looks like it may have been used in a demolition derby at one point.
Oh! This person has used this as a sign for business! It says ‘brakes, rust, repair, tires, engine, shocks’.
Robin Allen LaPlante: So that is exactly my point. You see these houses with these old cars and — and I needed a friend to tell me this — but those cars can be useful. Everything, maybe, has a use that we can recycle it and reuse it. Like all the junk is kind of — it's not junk. But when you first move here and you see it, you're like, ‘Why is all that stuff there?’
Dirt roads I thought were dangerous.
Erica Heilman: What seemed unsafe to you?
Robin Allen LaPlante: My entire life I had grown up with paved roads. Dirt roads seemed uncared for and unmaintained, and I think understanding now that there is a maintenance that dirt roads undergo.
Erica Heilman: Oh, so you thought that they were just forgotten, kind of, that they —
Robin Allen LaPlante: I kind of thought that dirt roads were, like, poor? Like, we didn't have enough money to pave this road so we didn't pave this road.
Erica Heilman: That's so fascinating! Oh my God! I mean, of course. Like why would you not pave a road? It must be because you can't!
Robin Allen LaPlante: Right? Like, why wouldn't you pave this road? Why wouldn't you? Like people live on this road. Why wouldn't you pave it?
Robin Allen LaPlante: Oh, and then this: the trash. Where you drop off the trash. This is the transfer station. You bring your trash and recycling to the transfer station. And that was a thing that I didn't know was a thing. When I moved here, the landlady had left me instructions. But I was like, ‘So when is trash pickup?' and she was like, ‘So you take it down once a week to the transfer station.’ And I was like, 'I'm sorry, I put my trash in my car? And I drive it to the transfer station, is what you're telling me? I drive it to a dump?’
This was a thing that I needed a lot of hand-holding on. And this became our routine of every Saturday. That was part of the things that we had to get done that day. We put everything in the back of the car, drive it down. But it also became, like, this opportunity — especially after we moved to Barton. It became this opportunity to check in with the guys at the transfer station, like, ‘How's it going? What are you doing?’ And you have these moments of connection, because you have to do this thing because it's part of what the culture is.
"It's more fun to make friends by listening and by hearing where someone else has come from, and it's more fun to give yourself lots of opportunities to interact with them and see, kind of, where that takes you."Robin Allen LaPlante
Erica Heilman: Did you appreciate that right away? Or was there a resistance?
Robin Allen LaPlante: Yes. Yeah, I was terrified at the beginning because I was like, 'They're gonna know that I don't know what I'm doing.'
Erica Heilman: So, you could approach that in a few different ways. What what did you do?
Robin Allen LaPlante: I sat with the discomfort, is what I did. I had to just sit with the discomfort, and kind of just watch and observe and be sort of a member of the outskirts before you could kind of go in and be the person in the middle.
I think that when there's resentment for new things, on both sides, whether it's new people coming to your area, or when you're approaching something new for the first time, there are always moments of friction. That's like, you're a new gear being put in an old machine, and you have all the sharp edges. And sometimes all of your edges just need to be kind of smoothed out so that everything moves the same way.
When I first moved here, you know, it was, like I said, very obviously a flatlander. My neighbors, even — I'm like the street flatlander. And that's fine with me. I'm not from here. My family hasn't been from here, but I choose to be here. I made a choice to come here. And I make a choice to stay here because I love it. And I think that choice matters almost as much as being from here. And part of that choice means being a good member of the community and being open to what this community has to offer me. And it's more fun to make friends by listening and by hearing where someone else has come from, and it's more fun to give yourself lots of opportunities to interact with them and see, kind of, where that takes you.
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