Why You Can’t Find an ATM in Vermont

Dear Past Self,

You know how sad you are right now?   Because you can’t afford that amazing private university in rural Vermont?   Don’t worry.   You’ll get there someday — as a tourist, not a student — which will ultimately be a better fit. Not least because it will keep you out of the life-altering, crippling debt carried by most people you will know.   Trust me.

Love,

Future Self

Vermont — The State

Which roadside accessory is forbidden in Vermont?   Allow me a paragraph and some bullet points:

My Vermont citizenship had been 15 years in coming.   Finally and unexpectedly, I made it to the Green Mountain State.   I lived in a town allegedly pregnant with tourists all summer long which locals scathingly reference all year.   In between training for aerial and acrobatic classes I devoured every hiking trail I could get my hands on.

And observed lots of cute Vermont quirks:

  • Legit Beauty Queen — at the  Running of the Bulls  Strolling of the Heifers parade, the crowned woman wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail. I loved being in such an unpretentious place!
strolling of the heifers as seen by budget travel blog Half the clothes writer Jema Patterson

A stroller ambles with his heifer – too cute!

  • Pastoral Pride Parade — I loved  that the region’s biggest annual parade centers around the state’s agricultural personality. I adored  the “Dairy God Mother,” and I learned the Vermont dairy farm average of 155 cows supplies 63% of all of New England’s milk.
  • Flower Power — a older friend in New Hampshire (originally from VT) told me that the “Hippies” currently giving Vermont its reputation as the most liberal state in the nation are a far cry from the original culture. He said the back-to-the-land movement of the 70’s brought tons of transplants to the state, forever changing the social landscape.   Hailing from a conservative Western community, I found the tie-dyed 4H club quirky but adorable.
  • Fiercely Local – while logistically annoying, I swelled with pride for Vermont’s tough stance on mega banks. Basically, there are none.   No Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, CitiBank”¦   just local and regional banks keeping money local and regional.   If your money is with a mega bank, good luck finding a branded ATM.  You get fee-charging money machines or have to hunt for cash back!
  • Fiercely Fair – the Brattleboro courthouse (my Vermont hometown) went down in history as signing off on the first civil union allowed in America.
rainbow flag

A local friend’s local father says Brattleboro is “the most liberal town in the most liberal state in the nation.” Maybe! It would give the left coast a run for its money. Sure was a great place to live! photo: wikimedia commons

  • Unadulterated Life — another example of commercialization refusal: billboards are banned in Vermont. I didn’t notice until a rest stop (complete with a biodome nursing greenhouse plants to recycle toilet water) pointed it out.   It does give road trips and old-timey, nostalgic feel.
  • Reforested Fortress — During the shepherding heyday of the 1800’s, New England was 80% cleared land, 20% forested. Now, it’s 80% forested, 20% cleared.   Especially in Southern Vermont, one is basically always driving through a gauntlet of trees.   Northern Vermont opens up a bit, looking more like western Oregon with a mix of pasture and forest blanketing the valleys between more-distant hills.   And random geological intrusions in the highway medians.
  • French-Canadian, Eh? — Many New England (and Vermont!) residents are descended from French Canadians whose recipes infuse the region’s cuisine. My friend’s jaw dropped when I told her I’d never had pork pie — a staple of her childhood and a prominent player at her French-Canadian grandmother’s dining table.   Of course we did not pass go, or collect $200 but went straight to the Red Arrow Diner for a slice of proper local comfort food.
red arrow diner milford

Is pork pie a good enough excuse to put a New Hampshire diner in a post about Vermont? photo: larry cultrera via dinerhotline

  • Bilingual Border — On roadtrips, I thrilled at being close enough to Canada to get French broadcasts and see U.S. Government signs in both English and French. #wanderlust

Cities of the Most Rural, Almost Least-Populated State

Before making it across upstate New York and visiting Niagra Falls, I spent a day working in cafes in Vermont’s capital — Montpelier –   and Vermont’s largest city, Burlington.    My memories of that road/work trip will be forever coated in the smell of fresh woodchips.   Things I noticed when not hunched over a latte and a laptop:

  • Put Some Bling On It – Vermont is as bad as New York when it comes to highway signage waste.   Every single delineator pole is labeled — i.e. 49.25, 49.30, 49.35. 49.4.   Every 4th delinator sign is larger in size.   FYI: not useful, ye civil servant decision makers.
  • Super Civil Discourse — Wasn’t sure what to expect when I pulled open the door of the historic capitol building and took a self-tour of the halls and chambers. The countless, face to face, passionate conversations going on in the hallways surprised and pleased me.   Old timey paintings, hand-lettered office signage on glass windows, 1800’s inspired carpeting murals, and modern-day suits filled the intimate building.   Also pleasing: the returned smiles all over town.   I’ve said before New England isn’t the friendliest place in the world.   So refreshing to cross paths with a niche of people who share my social values!
vermont state capitol building in montpelier as seen by budget travel blog half the clothes' writer Jema Patterson

Hot tip: don’t try the front door. It’s locked.

  • The Pacific Northwest Teleports! — on the road to the heart of Vermont’s largest city (Burlington — population 42,000) I passed cute, historic houses and hill top views of Lake Champlain. The whole scene felt very “Vancouver, BC” (or Portland, Oregon or Seattle, WA)”¦ except not a teeming city.   Cool place!
  • Downtown Disappointment — sadly, Burlington has sacrificed its city center to standard commercialization seen all over America. The pedestrian mall felt like Santa Barbara full of mainstream shops: GAP, Banana Republic, Macy’s, etc.   Buildings downtown have had the city’s outer architectural charm renovated right out of the scene.
  • A Mountain of FOMO — staring at the Adirondacks across Lake Champaign, I cursed my rotten luck. Only one life to live and only so many mountains one can climb.   Maybe in an alternate universe those mountains and I will come together?
Lake_Champlain_Dusk

How can you not want to take off into those mountains?! photo: wikimedia commons

  • Real but Fake? — the road to Woodstock, Vermont (not the famous Woodstock, but I’m sure I’m not the first person to happily take a detour thinking I’d see something neat) is lined with a gazillion kitchy tourist stops. Anything people might want to do or buy on vacation has been built or supplied.   The facades are all commodification of a long-gone culture.   Felt like a theme park.   Or a foreign country where people dress up in native costume for the sake of tourists’ “authentic” experience with the hope of  drawing more tourists.   All very weird.

One last weird but cute Vermont thing?

They have the most adorable name for soft-serve: Creemee!

I never ate  a creemee:  temps were mostly  outside of ice-cream enjoying range when I left.  Guess I’ll have to join the summer throngs descending upon the Green Mountain State one year!  â™£

How I Survived A No-Smartphone Road Trip

I’m not a huge fan of New York’s interstate system.

Tolls.

Non-sensical numbering.

Three billion wasted signs.

I won’t say I had a bad time, though, as I made my way from circus school in Vermont to Niagra Falls.

Read on to find out how New York punishes those who text and drive and what it’s like to travel in modern America without a smartphone.

How I Launched my Digital Nomad Career in Zagreb, Croatia

Let’s rewind 11 years.

I didn’t set out to author a travel site and blog.  I hit the road after graduating from university and decided a blog was better than a listserv because then I wouldn’t be getting dozens of email responses from friends and family which would then require even more time sitting in internet cafes instead of enjoying precious time to explore and absorb these new corners of the world.

My blog started as a rather boring ticking off of facts plus a daily play-by-play, “…and then I got a banana, coconut, pineapple smoothie which was only 25 cents!”  Then a wonderful, close friend said, “I like reading your blog, but… uh… they’re kind of long.  Can you make them shorter?”  I took my readerships’ request to heart and started writing 50% for them, chopping out bits that would lead anyone but me the writer and experiencer to tears of boredom.

jema patterson who writes transformational travel blog half the clothes

Flashback: The intrepid 22 year old, racing around and gobbling up as much of the globe as possible in her youthful gluttony.  Oh what a decade will do to one’s perspective, hey?

Fast-forward eight years.

My partner-at-the-time and I had set off to travel, starting with a working holiday visa in New Zealand.  From there, we hopped to the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia.  We were real sick of sweating in the tropics by the time we headed to the Czech Republic, hitchhiked to Germany, and then worked on farms across Italy.  By the time we sought a quiet refuge outside the Schengen Zone, exhaustion consumed us.

We used Njuskalo – the craigslist or gumtree of Croatia – to find an apartment.  We sent messages in English to apartments that fit our budget, looked at two, and picked on in a little village on a hill overlooking the city with a nearby bus stop.

digital nomad start croatia

The Croatian living room where I spent many hours working on my first attempt at digital nomad life.

It had been several months since I’d sat sweating in a Bangkok internet cafe cobbling together a  thorough packing list to fill an unmet need.  I, personally, when packing for our adventure, could only find lists from people just setting out.  Now that I’d been on four international trips and currently on the road for nearly two years, I thought I owed it to the traveling community to tell people what I wished I’d been told.  The internet was filled with advice from other newbies, but no experienced traveler had taken the time to share.

Well, by the time we got to Croatia, my little site was seeing hundreds of visitors a day, up from the handful of friends and family readers that used the blog to keep track of us.  I felt vindicated that I had indeed filled an unmet need.  It didn’t occur to me that there might be a way – beyond ads – to make an actual income off the blog.  I spent a day slogging through forums and developer information to get ads to display on the pages visited by strangers.  Then I turned my attention to another project.

looking down the plitvice lake gorge

I took a few breaks from work, tripping outside the capital city to see some Croatian icons – like Plitvice pictured here.

One of the major ironies of my life is that I have a knack for writing excellent resumes, cover letters, and persuasive essays.  Ironic because I have no interest in the hoop-jumping to which said writing often leads.  I do not want a job.  I will probably never (formally) further my education.  Just so you know I’m not just blowing my own horn: I graduated debt free from a university education with the price-tag of $107,624.  I paid the bulk of it with merit 1work-ethic, grades, and persuasive writing ability based scholarships.  (The rest I paid by working 72 hours a week every summer at a blue collar job, working  a room-and-board job living in the dorms one year as a student leader, and cobbling together numerous small jobs… like volunteering to let cognitive psychologists read my brain waves while I reacted to screen stimuli in their experiments.)

Proof of resume/cover letter prowess: I’ve been invited to interview for every job to which I’ve applied.  Every friend or family member I’ve helped with these documents has been invited to interview to the job they applied.  I’ve written dozens of admissions essays for friends, and all of them have gotten in to the schools of their dreams.

The point of this horn-tooting is: as  I sat  in Croatia spending the tail end of my travel dollars, searching for a new cash source, vehement about not wanting a “job,” I thought about how how much I enjoyed helping friends turn out prize-worthy essays and resumes.  I’d never asked for compensation, but maybe I could start a business doing it for strangers?

And so began digital nomad attempt #1.

maksmir park zagrab croatia trail

The enormous and underutilized city park near my house. On these trails I worked on my other goal – getting my fitness back after nearly two years of travel.

The thing most digital nomads learn in hindsight is setting up a business is a huge investment.  I spent a month in my Croatian apartment learning Joomla, writing copy for my pages, figuring out how to get paid, and writing a business plan.  I even started marketing a bit before it was time to hit the road.  However, I realized after a few months that I’d made a grave mistake.  Yes, I was good at what I was attempting to do.  But I wasn’t passionate.  I loved helping my family and friends because I loved the people.  The actual process – that I happened to be very good at – didn’t really light my fire.  Kind of like a tall person may not actually enjoy playing basketball.

Eventually, I finally got up the nerve to monetize this site.   Since then, I’ve started a podcast and am considering launching another website, this time a niche site meant to provide deep expertise in a tiny area.

♣

References

References
↑1 work-ethic, grades, and persuasive writing ability

New Englanders Aren’t Talking About Alaska

People kept referencing the Yukon in conversations.   “Why are Vermonters, New Hampshireites, Connecticuters, etc. always  discussing a nearly-uninhabited, Canadian wild-land four thousand  miles away?” I wondered.   A month later, a lightbulb moment: the Yukon Territory isn’t on the collective radar after all.   What is?

Why New England Deserves its Reputation

“What the hell is that?!” I asked the horse trainer at the farm where I’d picked up work while house sitting in New Hampshire.

Sitting shotgun in his big black pick-up truck, I stared out the window at the neighbor’s untidy scene.   Plastic tubing wound in and out of giant steel containers, all of it strung between a stand of naked trees.

Not that I know the first thing about meth labs, but this situation looked sketchy enough to qualify.