Vermont is the lifelong home of Andrew’s parents, Clay Meriwether and Donna, and the setting of the rural upbringing Andrew was eager to leave. The state anchors their settled life at a family farmhouse while marking the point of departure in Andrew’s own history: he grew up there in near isolation and left as soon as he could.

Family Home and Local Roots

Clay came from central Vermont and worked as a mechanic and handyman. Donna, who lived on a commune in the microtown of Jamaica, first encountered him when she brought a battered Datsun to the garage beside his parents’ old farmhouse. Clay worked on the car for two weeks without charge; they married four months later. Their meeting links Vermont’s small-scale rural settings—the farmhouse, garage, and commune—to the family’s beginnings.

Clay and Donna remained in Vermont throughout their lives. Their differences fit within that shared rootedness: Donna was a vegetarian who kept a small garden and pursued palm reading, aura reading, and holistic healing, while Clay remained a hunter and handyman. Both were voracious readers, with Tom Robbins, Daphne du Maurier, and Walter Mosley among their shared favorites. Their home joined practical labor, gardening, and eclectic interests without drawing either of them away from the state.

Andrew’s Upbringing and Departure

Andrew’s memories of growing up at the family farmhouse are complicated by distance. Nostalgia has softened the edges of his childhood, but it does not erase the near isolation he experienced there. He could not leave Vermont quickly enough and managed to do so at eighteen. The contrast between his parents’ lifelong attachment to the state and his early departure makes Vermont a measure of competing ideas of home: for Clay and Donna, a place to stay; for Andrew, a place to get out of.

Narrative Significance

Vermont enters the account through family history rather than through a description of its wider landscape. Its defining details are intimate and domestic: an old farmhouse, a repair garage, a garden, and the parents who never left. Against that rooted background, Andrew’s departure is a consequential break with the isolation of his childhood, while the state remains the setting of the life his parents continued to choose.