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In Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the subjects are quirky

The land and climate are hard, which suits the people who live there.

For a photo project on the area Vermonters call the Northeast Kingdom, Stéphane Lavoué often drove this road and saw, he says, “more deer than human beings” on it.

Photographs byStéphane Lavoué

ByArcher Mayor

7 min read

This story appears in the November 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

There’s a habit in some of the more remote sections of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. When you drive up to a person’s out-of-the-way home, you honk your horn and wait before exiting your vehicle. So the dogs can gauge your intentions. It’s a form of politesse. It’s also not too dumb an idea.

Locals call it simply the Kingdom. The full title purportedly was bestowed in the 1940s by a politician. But whatever the origin, the place deserves a special label. Even in a state as different, occasionally ornery, and notoriously freethinking as Vermont, the Kingdom stands out.

an older man with white hair wearing suspenders standing below a taxidermy animal — William Eddy was an environmentalist, filmmaker, author, and teacher who “made the link between my fantasy and the reality of the Kingdom,” Lavoué says. Eddy died at his home there in 2016, at age 88.

a museum building with snow in front — Vermont writer Archer Mayor calls the Northeast Kingdom “a retreat for the eccentric.” One of its museums specializes in everyday objects.

a taxidermy wolf in a glass case in a museum — Another museum in the Northeast Kingdom includes stuffed wildlife among its exhibits.

In the state’s northeast corner, it covers roughly 2,000 square miles, comprises three counties, and contains fewer than 64,000 people. Some 80 percent of it is forest. Distinct from the rest of Vermont in many ways, geologically it’s more Canadian than not, an ancient tectonic collage carved by ice sheets, wedged under often querulous skies.

It’s been said that in this cold country, the law has less to do with rules than with personal honor—sometimes one and the same, but not always. The land and climate are hard. The people tend to be frank. They live in the Kingdom because it suits.

Stéphane Lavoué, a French native now living in Brittany, came upon the Kingdom when visiting friends and took it as his project. I recognize the people he photographed—not as individuals or by name but as archetypal subjects of the Kingdom with its mysterious sense of otherness.

These are pragmatists. They make do, and they craft what they can’t afford to buy. Most important, they are not hard-bitten or downtrodden by a harsh environment. The Kingdom is a choice, at once a retreat for the eccentric and a home to the independent.

a young woman standing amongst hanging piles of beef wearing a red apron — “In the Kingdom I imagined,” Lavoué says, he gave fanciful titles to some residents. Josie Ann Monroe, a bow-and-arrow hunter who studied custom butchery and worked as a meat cutter, was “my princess.”

an older woman with short white hair wearing a blue sweater and holding an axe — “In the Kingdom I imagined,” Lavoué says, he gave fanciful titles to some residents. Josie Ann Monroe, a bow-and-arrow hunter who studied custom butchery and worked as a meat cutter, was “my princess.”

young sheared alpacas in a dark barn — Resident alpacas settle into their barn after being sheared at the Log Cabin Farm in Irasburg.

of a male worker wearing a green hair knit and a black t-shirt — A young worker is dressed for his shift at a maple syrup factory.

a man holding the taxidermy head of an elk outside — A young worker is dressed for his shift at a maple syrup factory.

a mounted fish on a mantle below a painted portrait of a young chid on a wooden wall — Walt Driscoll displays some of his taxidermy pieces, including this mounted fish, in his home.

When my editor asked if I knew what was in the Museum of Everyday Life, I said I did not—but wouldn’t be startled if it were empty, a jest. I’ve since learned that it’s a real museum with a collection reflecting its name, displaying everything from a safety pin to a kitchen match.

Still, it might have been empty, in keeping with the Kingdom’s vaunted quirkiness. Those who dwell here may not have much money, but they’re often rich in irony.

Devoted Vermonter Archer Mayor, a death investigator for the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, is the award-winning author of a series of crime novels starring Vermont detective Joe Gunther.