Signs
Just the idea of the Vice President of the United States coming to my tiny town was loaded with contradictions – national and local, exciting and boring, memorable and forgettable, with both terrible and kind of great skiing conditions – which was definitely reflected in my hit-or-miss effort to jot something down about, as the urge was both overwhelming yet also felt totally irrelevant.
The weird truth is that I spent hours thinking about Vance’s visit, wondering about the reasons for it and the message that it sent. I wrote, erased, and re-wrote thousands of words in the weeks since. I tried to be lighthearted and punchy, which seems harder than ever right now. I tried getting all serious on it and weaving it into a deft quilt of story arcs like public lands, outdoor culture, small business and other huge topics on my brain. But I never got the pencil sharp enough in those efforts to press publish.
And yet, it’s still on my mind.
If you missed the press release, the population of Waitsfield, Vermont, was measured at around 1800 in the most recent census (2020). With the surrounding towns of Fayston and Warren, there’s probably around 3,500 valley wide.
So when more than a thousand protesters showed up in the “downtown” area to vent their frustration with the current administration, people noticed. Despite glacial snowbanks and limited standing room (which made the people dancing to the deejay that much more impressive), the demonstrators displayed their pent up frustration in a thousand or so different ways. Mainly, through their handheld, handmade signs.
There were funny ones, sad ones, dark ones, pithy ones. There were meticulously stenciled signs on crisp new pieces of poster board. And there were hastily drawn ones on the backs of clearly recent pizza boxes.
The simplest messages stood out, like the poignant “stand with Ukraine” message held by a grim-faced man in a long black wool coat (#onbrand), or the honest words of a sign reading “you can enjoy your vacation when we can enjoy our democracy” held by a bright young woman with her toddler on her back.
To be honest, you had to wonder why Vance and his family would even come to Vermont for a ski weekend in the first place. Was it a box to be checked? Maybe a not-so-subtle poke in the eye for a historically liberal congressional delegation? Or a deliberate flex right down the road from an occasionally anti-Trump Republican Governor? Or a tinted-window drive-by just to remind you who’s calling the shots at the moment?
According to press release, the Veep was there for the skiing as he is an “avid” skier, which could certainly have been true. But based on the unconfirmed rumors of his faceplant on his first run, and of going around the bull wheel at the top of the mountain, it seems like a stretch. Besides, if you had a free private jet staffed with well-armed ski valets, would the tail-end of a melt freeze cycle in a town without a sushi bar actually be your top choice?
During the demonstration, I snapped a few shots and shared them with friends by text. And by the time I got home, a couple of those photos had taken on a life of their own, gaining tens of thousands of likes and reshares around the country (as did numerous other images taken by many other people). I received a note from my mom in Arizona, my aunt and uncle in Los Angeles, my friends in Wyoming, saying that they’d seen Vermont on the national news. Clearly, a nerve had been struck.
I only saw three Trump fans during the Vance demonstration. The first stood on a street corner near the pottery studio wearing a bright red MAGA hat. He was clearly there for the chance to stand proud, look people in the eye and make his case. It wasn’t hostile, but it definitely wasn’t relaxing either.
The second drove his truck back and forth through the downtown area for the duration of the event. In a place with so many trucks it’s hard to find yours in the parking lot, this one stood out. It had a massive Trump flag in the bed, far above the fray, while two smaller American flags were mounted on the bumper, were covered in mud from the rear tires, and dragged on the ground whenever he stopped.
The third was a neighbor, an openly conservative voter, and the guy who offered me a ride home from the demonstration as he was coming back from a job site in his electrician’s van.
We had a good talk during the mile drive back. Mainly about where to get reliable news right now. He was bemoaning the liberal slant of most large news outlets, but was clearly also struggling to find reliable coverage in the more conservative outlets. We talked about the cuts coming to the VA, and the impact that the rumored sell off of public lands will have on hunters. It all seems worst-case scenario and hypothetical, he said.
I encouraged him to “dig deeper and look wider,” and as we pulled into my driveway instead of saying goodbye, he offered a semi-snarky “resist” to me as I climbed down out of his truck. I laughed to myself, as both would look pretty good on a sign.
