This commentary is by Justin Neuman, who is a professor of literary studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School.   Everyone who makes the drive north on Interstate 91 knows the feeling. The chaos of Connecticut, funneled into the inevitable snarl at the hard turn in Springfield, Massachuset ts — and then the hills appear, the billboards vanish, the traffic melts away, and you can breathe. You’re home. When I was growing up in Vermont, I looked at the Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York plates with the disdain only a local kid in a resort town can muster. Flatlanders, I called them. Southerners — as if the Mason-Dixon really ran along the old line of British forts at Vermont’s southern border. My parents were transplanted New Yorkers, and Vermonters are protective of native status. “If a cat has kittens in the oven,” the saying goes, “do you call ’em biscuits?” Now my car wears Connecticut plates. I live in New Haven at the southern end of Interstate 91, and I’m one of the flatlanders driving north to give my kids a chance to experience the childhood I had, to test myself in the mountains I love. The childhood I had: mucking out horse stalls before school, even when it was below zero and we had to break the horses’ water buckets with sledgehammers. Wandering the woods alone, carrying a sword I’d carved from a piece of maple. That maple sword lasted 30 years before I broke it dueling in the driveway with my daughter. I’ve run more than 50 trail ultramarathons now, from the Rockies to the Alps, but it’s the Vermont races I keep coming back to. The Catamount Ultra, the Trapp Mountain Marathon, the Vermont 50K and the Moosalamoo 36-miler. Connecticut, it turns out, is rockier than Vermont; my childhood self would never have believed it. New Hampshire has higher peaks. But the Green Mountains are the mountains of my soul. I’ve always done hard things with my kids — skiing, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking — the way my father did with me. But running is different. Running is the one sport where there’s no separating; we cover the same ground at the same speed, step for step. I started running with my kids when my son was 8 and my daughter was 10. By the time they were in high school, we were racing ultramarathons together.  In 2024, I returned to race the Catamount Ultra with my daughter. She was 16. It was her first ultramarathon. We ran for 30 miles through the Vermont woods, my daughter setting the pace and me keeping us fueled, hydrated and on the right trail. As we neared the finish, she started looking troubled. I asked her what was wrong, expecting muscle cramps or the simple, brutal reality of exhaustion.  “We’re getting close to the finish line, but we’re not quite at 50 kilometers,” she said, checking her watch. The finish line’s the finish line, I told her. But no. She was running the extra distance to make 49 into 50, finish line be damned. I crossed the line and had a celebratory beer from Von Trapp Brewing while my daughter ran in circles around the parking lot, winning the race she was having with herself. That October, my son Alden and I lined up for the Trapp Mountain Marathon in Stowe. He was 15. We set goals, not to race fast but to race smart; to go out slow so we could finish fast, or just finish, period. We watched the fast folk charge off down the trail. Not us. I counseled caution, letting 20 or 25 runners pull ahead. Over the final miles we flew, pushing hard into his reserves. He clocked a sub-seven-mile at mile 25 and outsprinted me to the finish line. Compared to the rest of the nation and the world, Vermont is an eddy in the river, close to the flow but calm. The mountains are the same. My hometown is largely the same. People in town still know our family, if not always our names. I’m not defending a title when I run in Vermont. I’m defending something harder to name: the place that made me, the practice that keeps me whole, the kids outpacing me on every hill. We’re running home. Read the story on VTDigger here: Why Vermonters who leave can’t stay away. ...read more read less