Why People Love New England
The dream of small towns, stone walls, covered bridges, country stores, and town greens are just some of the reasons why people love New England. What’s yours?
West Cornwall Covered Bridge in Cornwall, Connecticut.
Photo Credit : Len MelansonWhy do so many people feel homesick for New England — even if they’ve never set foot here? Yankee‘s longtime editor Mel Allen responds to a common reader sentiment and the question it poses in this brief examination of why people love New England.
Photo Credit : Stacy Hetrick (User submitted)
Why People Love New England
A few weeks ago, a reader named Dawn Rigoni left this comment on one of my online columns: “… I’m one of those people who is ‘homesick for New England’ even though I’ve never lived there. I’ve dreamed of living in Vermont ever since I was little, even though I’ve never been; my favorite school librarian moved away to Weathersfield, Vermont, when I was a child and sent me a postcard, and ever since, I’ve felt that my heart belongs to a place I’ve never set foot in … Please know how fortunate you are to live in such a beautiful corner of the world!“
I’ve heard this often in my years here at Yankee — letters and calls from distant places from people who feel they belong to a region they’ve never seen. It’s as though they have a memory in their hearts of New England. Now I don’t imagine that in that yearning they consider negotiating a rotary in Boston, or crawling along Storrow Drive at 5 p.m., or shoveling out after a nor’easter, or even working in the garden with blackflies swarming in May. I think they dream of small towns, stone walls, beacons of light, seas pounding on rocks, pine trees and maples, sugar shacks, town meetings, country stores, rolling hills, and town greens — all those markers that tell us where we are when we’re here.
I don’t think New Englanders feel this way about distant places — at least none I know. Oh, every winter, especially during a cold snap, or when spring takes forever to bloom, I hear friends talking about sunny climes and tropical breezes — but that’s escape talk, fleeting and understandable, not a bone-deep feeling like the one my correspondent, Dawn, describes.
I wonder how many of us who live here take New England for granted. It’s the easiest thing to do, like looking at the face of a loved one so often that you no longer really see it. This is what happened in the ’60s and ’70s, and even into the ’80s, when some of the most cherished and historic houses in various towns and cities in New England fell to wrecking balls. In their place rose condo complexes, parking lots, home developments, and department stores. We forgot how lovely those faces were.
Yankee travels to some of the most beautiful places in the region, all of which were preserved by people who never forgot to see. We’re lucky — among the luckiest people anywhere. I hope one day Dawn Rigoni gets to see for herself.
What’s your answer for why people love New England? Let us know in the comments — we love reading them.
This post was first published in 2009 and has been updated.
SEE MORE:
The Most Beautiful Places in Maine
75 Classic New England Foods
10 Prettiest Coastal Towns in New England
Prettiest Fall Foliage Villages in Vermont
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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