Flatlanders and Woodchucks

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Bob Fields.

I’m calling from Orwell, Vermont, a little tiny town that has more cows than people in it. More cows than people.

There are two terms that we learned when we moved to Vermont. One of them is flatlander, and the other one is woodchuck. And they relate to whether the person is a native Vermonter or not.

We’ve been told that a woodchuck is someone who’s a native Vermonter, and in fact, we were told that it is a native Vermonter with at least one or two, maybe even three generations of Vermont residents, people who were born and lived in Vermont. Whereas a flatlander or some new doesn’t come from Vermont, but in fact comes from out of state, which seemed a little bit of a kind of a joke for us because we came from California to Vermont, where the mountains are 12 to 14,000 feet high. And in Vermont, they’re a mere 4,000 feet high. A mere 4,000 feet high.

We were just wondering what the background between those two words is because they seem kind of interesting. And we’re just kind of wondering how native Vermonters ever got to be called woodchucks as opposed to flatlanders.

It’s not 100 percent known, but the best guess is a really solid one. Most authorities, most Vermonters who study this stuff suggest that it just simply has to do with all the firewood. There’s a lot of firewood in Vermont. It seems like everyone’s always cutting, stacking, hauling, burning firewood. And so the woodchuck as a creature to call the locals just seems like a natural fit. You’re always chucking wood around, aren’t you?

Well, yeah. No, maybe. In fact, I live in an old, well, what is now an old derelict apple orchard that was started in 1894. And we do certainly cut a lot of firewood. Applewood is a great burning wood. We just always wondered. We never thought it had to do with the firewood. We always thought it had to do with the animals.

Oh, yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

Well, it’s the animals too, but I mean, because they’re local and that’s the local.

Woodchuck is mainly used for groundhogs in the Northeast anyway.

Interestingly enough, woodchuck is also sometimes used by New Yorkers who live upstate New York to refer to themselves.

So it’s not exclusive to Vermonters.

The term flatlander is even more interesting in that it’s used to describe outsiders or people from away in other parts of the country, not just in Vermont and New Hampshire.

So you’ll find people in the Pacific Northwest who use it as well, which is cool.

But generally, it’s referring to people.

If you come from flatland, the suggestion there is that you don’t know what the hard life is because you’ve never had to walk uphill or work uphill.

Well, that’s interesting.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

Really appreciate the call, Bob.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

There’s a blog by Sean Caravan called Inkeeping Insights in Stowe, Stowe, Vermont.

Yeah.

And so this is his description of the difference between flatlanders and woodchucks.

He says, Flatlanders don’t chuck wood.

Flatlanders pick up the phone and dial a number they find in the classified section of their local paper.

A few hours later, wood chucks arrive, usually in a rusting pickup truck filled with split wood,

A mix of hardwoods which they stack for the Flatlander in exchange for cash.

Well, that pretty much explains it all, doesn’t it?

Yeah, that’s Sean Caravan of the blog Inkeeping Insights in Stow.

Nice.

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