Autumn 2008
My Vermont: "How Much Wood?"
By Tom Slayton
Illustrated by Jean Carlson Masseau
Vermont is surely the only place in the world where woodchucks heat with wood and drink beer.
Woodchucks, as all native Vermonters know, are not just a common hibernating rodent. At least that's not what today's Vermonter means when he talks about "those woodchucks down the road." In the common, everyday speech of Vermonters, a woodchuck is a Vermont redneck — that is, anyone more rural and independent than the speaker.
Most everyone who lives here has heard the term. In fact, if Vermont weren't getting decidedly citified, I wouldn't have even bothered to research it. But some time ago, I became interested in the word and where it came from.
I asked several people if they knew the origin of the term "woodchuck," as applied to rural people. One elderly Vermonter said simply: "That's what they used to call Vermonters before the price of land went up."
Everybody I talked with knew that the term is not necessarily a complimentary one. There's a derogatory note in it, since you're basically calling someone a coarse bumpkin. It's a little bit like the familiar and despicable terms of derogation sometimes applied to blacks, Hispanics and other minorities; "woodchuck" can be used with impunity, even affection, within the subculture of rural poverty, but not by an outsider.
It's OK to slap your buddy on the back and address him as "you old woodchuck," if you're bellying up to the bar in your Johnson woolens with your chainsaw double-parked outside. But if you're writing a check to that person for delivering cordwood for your trendy little airtight stove, don't use the same term. Not if you value your kneecaps.
Martin Johnson, a former state secretary of environmental conservation, and a wise and witty man, once identified himself as "a woodchuck with a college education." Since he is a member of a native Vermont family of some seven generations standing, Johnson has every right to declare himself a woodchuck. He says that the term should be worn with pride.
"We native Vermonters have the same high moral standards as woodchucks," Johnson said. "The woodchuck makes his living from the earth. He has to manage his environment carefully.
"And," Johnson added, "he has enough sense to stay in out of the snow!"
According to Johnson, "Long ago, persons of great wisdom noticed the striking parallel between the noble woodchuck and the noble Vermonter, and the term was born."
Nevertheless, it's a relative term with a slightly downscale edge. People from "away," who may own a bit of land or a second home in Vermont, probably refer to all Vermont residents as woodchucks. But people from Burlington (which is still part of Vermont, despite rumors to the contrary) never think of themselves as woodchucks. Proper Burlingtonians refer to people from all other parts of Vermont as woodchucks. Likewise, people from Barre or Rutland consider places like Plainfield and Shrewsbury to be woodchuck terrain. And so on, out into the puckerbrush.
When Plainfield people talk about woodchucks, they usually mean the folks in Groton or Wolcott or Shady Rill. And when the people in those hamlets refer to their neighbors as woodchucks, it's the humblest, most rural, least assuming folks that they mean, those living not so much on income as on lack of expense, way out on the backroads.
Where did the term originate? The most likely answer came from a University of Vermont professor I spoke with years ago. He said that a 19th-century dictionary of American usage held that one meaning of the word woodchuck was "a rural person." My own research uncovered the ancient use in England of the term "woodcock" as "a rural simpleton, a rube."
Is it possible that English woodcocks got translated into American as "woodchucks"? Stranger things have happened. Woodcocks, woodchucks, whatever: rubes of the backcountry, long may they thrive.
Experience, our best teacher, added a final comment one day as I was indulging in that autumn rite of many Vermonters — stacking wood. The rows of blocks and sticks rose higher, and I hardly noticed when a friend who is also a woodcutter by trade drove in with a truckload.
He climbed into the back of the truck and with the help of a young woman began tossing the clean-split blocks to the ground. "There they are," I thought as I glanced in their direction, "chucking that wood."
Before you could say, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?" the little light bulb that signifies a mental connection went off over my head.
I stopped stacking and went over to the truck and climbed aboard. It only took a few minutes for the three of us woodchucks to finish the job. A
Author and journalist Tom Slayton is editor emeritus of Vermont Life.
