I just got back from two weeks in Oregon, and the thing that struck me most forcibly was the enormous scale of the landscape out there. Oregon is big — really big.
A quick bit of map-checking showed me that Vermont would fit into Oregon 10 times. In fact, all of New England would fit into that state comfortably, with plenty of space left over.
Everything seems big out there, the Pacific Coast, craggy Mount Hood and the Cascade Range, the wide-open spaces of the high desert.
That’s probably because I’m more used to Vermont and New England-scale landscapes, which are, by and large, pretty small. This is not a new realization – smallness is one of our defining characteristics, after all. But there’s nothing like driving all day along a beautiful stretch of the Oregon coast, then another full day inland, and at the end of those two days, checking a map and realizing that you’ve just traversed one small corner of a very large piece of geography.
It all made me realize just how small my home state really is. Vermont is smaller than some Oregon counties! And what that means, of course, is that Vermont is vulnerable in ways that Oregon – the west, generally - is not.
Vermont is strategically – vulnerably – positioned between three great metropolitan areas. It could easily be overwhelmed by development. And it probably would have been, had it not been for the foresight and wisdom of people like Art Gibb, Phil Hoff, Deane Davis, and others who alerted Vermonters to the threat of runaway development and helped put in place laws to control growth.
Those efforts are continuing, and include the recent enactment of Criterion 9L which tightened Act 250’s controls on strip development. And that, coincidentally, seems to be one of the things that Oregon has not done well. Several of their seaside towns are blighted with some of the most horrific roadside strip development I’ve seen anywhere. Maybe having all those wide open spaces makes you willing to sacrifice some places.
I returned to Vermont, feeling that smallness has its virtues too – virtues like intimacy. You feel close to nature in Vermont, a partner with it, rather than overwhelmed by it.
I often have that feeling as I walk along back roads, encountering farms and pleasant little villages that could exist, I am convinced, nowhere else.
It’s nice to go away because it makes you see things differently. And that makes it doubly nice to come back home.
