“Home is the word that comes closest to explaining what has become known as the Vermont mystique, for it suggests a herbage of stability and security that is elsewhere at a premium in the rootlessness of the present day. The greater the complexity and anonymity of the urban and suburban sprawl, the more endearing the fundamental values of a natural backdrop.

That is the appeal of a state that has had the wisdom or good fortune or both to safeguard the trappings of its traditions, and of the rural past, the heartland of the American experience.’’

-- Historian Ralph Nading Hill, in an essay called “The Magic of East Corinth,’’ in Arthur Griffin’s New England: The Four Seasons