Small Town Dispatches: Megan Mayhew Bergman

Welcome to Small Town Dispatches, a feature on The Peak that recognizes the efforts of sustaining a writing practice in places with unconventional resources. Writing can be deeply isolating, especially when you live outside of cities that are seen as cultural epicenters. So here, Special Features Editor Nadeen Kharputly interviews Shenandoah contributors to gain insights about what it’s like to live in small towns (and towns that feel small): rural areas, college towns, islands, hamlets, and more.

Writer: Megan Mayhew Bergman

Town: Shaftsbury, VT

Bio: Megan Mayhew Bergman is the author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Almost Famous Women, and How Strange a Season. She’s currently writing a biography of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Also a journalist, her work has been featured in the New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and NPR. She is a professor at Middlebury College where she also directs the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.

Tell us about your small town - how small is it?

I live on a small family farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont—population 3400.

What makes your town a unique place for your writing practice?

To be fair, I never intended to live here—my husband, a veterinarian, took over the family veterinary business here. Before moving to Vermont, I was a lifelong southerner (raised in the small town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina—population 53,000). Shaftsbury is adjacent to Bennington, Vermont, home of Bennington College—a place where I completed my MFA and taught for a time before moving over to Middlebury College. Bennington has historically been a radical place, and I got a dose of its intensity when I needed it most: this sort of shot in the arm as an artist. Bennington makes you want to take risks and push boundaries, creatively and personally.

There’s also an element of darkness here—Robert Frost lived nearby and wrote about it too. Winter is harsh. There’s a long stick season with gray skies. I live near woods known as the Bennington Triangle, an area of Southern Vermont where people are known to go missing. You can feel that pressing down on your spirit about half of the year. Vermont forced me to really look at myself away from my landscape and culture of origin, and to do a bit of a system update. I think that was healthy for me as a person and artist. My attachment to the natural world deepened here, and that relationship is the heart of who I am as a thinker and writer.

Do you have a favorite writing spot?

As a professor, mother, small business owner—anywhere I can write is a good writing spot. I have an office in the old veterinary clinic on the farm property. It looks out at the pasture and sometimes I get distracted by the red tailed hawk that swoops over my chickens, or my goats acting out. (I love my goats). I tend to write best alone in the house, specifically in the library. My house was built in 1834—definitely haunted—and the library is full of toppled books and scratched antiques. I light a candle and put a record on and often the work flows. Though not often enough.

How do you build community with other writers or creatives in your town?

This area is actually alive with all sorts of wonderful creative folks. I think there were like four published author parents in my daughter’s preschool class. I have several close friends with whom I talk about books over coffee and monthly dinners, and it’s easy to keep a sweet and sincere relationship with independent bookstores here. Vermont is also a place where people make solid intergenerational friendships—I’ve never seen a place less concerned with age or income.

I’d call myself a good-natured hermit, so I’ll admit that I have to consciously show up and feed relationships. It becomes important when you live in a quiet, isolated place to nurture the relationships that sustain you, and to practice reciprocity. I also love my therapist and a trainer I work with—those professional relationships are some of my most precious. I learned the hard way about the importance of taking care of yourself, and I invest in it now.

What do you appreciate most about where you live?

Vermont sort of demands humility and equanimity. No one really cares if you’re fancy or high achieving, and if you lead with that energy you will learn quickly that it’s unwelcome. There’s a coldness here that shocked me for years—but I’ve learned to appreciate the authenticity. No one’s faking much of anything; there’s no lipstick on the pigs here.

So I never leave the house thinking I’m important, or that anyone owes me anything. I feel very in touch with why I do what I do, because I love it. Not because it’s going to make me well-liked or admired. Vermonters taught me how to stop chasing approval, because they rarely give it, and that’s useful in a creative practice. Do it because you want to, need to—not because someone is going to give you flowers for it. I spent too much of my early life looking and hoping for flowers.