By Loralee Tester (Executive Director of the NEK Chamber of Commerce)
In October I wrote about the foliage rush and asked what happens on November 1st. We’re a week past it now. The leaves are down, the tour buses have gone home, and the hills have that bare brown look that tells you the woodstove is about to earn its keep.
Before we settle into stick season, I want to say thank you.
This was one of the best foliage seasons I can remember. The color came on strong and held, and for weeks it seemed like every back road had someone pulled over with a phone out the window. Downtowns were busy and inns were full. More than one shop owner told me it was the October they’d been hoping for.
The leaves get the calendar photos, but what I’m most grateful for this year is the people. My work takes me all over the Kingdom, into select board meetings and back offices and church basements, and I keep meeting people who believe in this place enough to give it real time. Town officials who volunteer far more hours than anyone sees. Business owners who keep investing when the math is tight. The person who organizes the holiday parade every year, the youth coach, the neighbor who plows out the end of your driveway without being asked.
We have real problems up here. Housing and workforce top the list, and everything costs more than it used to. What strikes me is how many people look at those problems and decide to stay at the table.
Gratitude can feel hard to come by lately. The national conversation is loud and angry, and social media will happily convince you that everyone is fighting with everyone. Then I sit down at a meeting in Barton or Island Pond or Hardwick and find people with very different politics working a problem through together, trading ideas, sometimes even laughing about it. I’d argue we have more to be grateful for right now than we have in a long time. It just doesn’t make the news.
So here is what I’m asking this season: put some of that gratitude to work close to home.
October brought visitors through our doors. November and December are our turn. Before you start clicking through your holiday list, think about what you can find within a few miles of your house. The Kingdom has some wonderful shops, and many of them carry things you won’t find at a big-box store or on the first page of a search: pottery and prints by local artists, books chosen by someone who actually reads them, maple products, wool, toys, outdoor gear, furniture built in a barn workshop down the road.
Make a point of going into a shop you’ve never been in. Most of us have a handful of places we always go and a dozen more we drive past without a second thought. Stop at one of those this year. You may find something better than what was on your list, and it will come with a story. “I found this in a little shop in Newport” beats a tracking number every time.
Not every gift has to come wrapped. Buy a gift certificate to a favorite café and tuck in a note promising to meet there for something warm on a cold January afternoon. Treat someone to dinner at a local restaurant on a weeknight, when the dining room could use the company. Give tickets to a show at Catamount Arts or the Highland Center for the Arts, a lift ticket, a lesson, a class, a massage, a guided snowshoe. An experience gets enjoyed twice, once when it’s opened and again when it’s used.
Every one of those purchases stays here longer than a package from a warehouse. Money spent at a local business helps that owner keep a neighbor on the payroll through the slow months. It pays for heating oil and a mortgage. And it comes back around when that same business sponsors the soccer team, donates the raffle basket, or says yes when the next fundraiser comes knocking.
Generosity reaches past the cash register, too. Food shelves, schools, churches and community groups across our three counties are heading into winter with more need and the same tight budgets. Write a check if you can. Drop off canned goods or a winter coat. Give an afternoon. Sometimes it’s as simple as noticing who could use a hand and offering one.
This place has never been easy, and it has never stood still. It has lasted because generation after generation kept choosing it, opening businesses and raising kids and farming and teaching and serving on boards, and figuring out what came next when things got hard. We get to make that choice too.
So thank someone who makes your town better. Walk into the shop you keep meaning to try. Buy the coffee, book the table, bring a friend. There’s a lot to be grateful for in the Northeast Kingdom, and we can show it in the places we choose to spend our time and money this winter.
— Loralee Tester is Executive Director of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce, serving Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans counties.