EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

Feelings Of A Love I Never Knew

September 14, 2026—Middletown Springs, Vermont (Home)

Today, I went outside to grill a steak I had bought at Price Chopper in Rutland. The steaks from Mach's Market in Pawlet are superior, vastly so, but parking there reminds me of the 1990s game Rush Hour, where little plastic cars were configured in seemingly impossible ways and the entire objective was figuring out how to get one car out. Mach's has somehow recreated this experience with actual automobiles, so I went to Price Chopper in West Rutland.

While standing outside waiting for the grill to heat up, I started thinking about my life and what, exactly, it had taken to get here.

My education was something out of a scene from Good Will Hunting. There was never anything linear about it. Officially, I have an eighth-grade education. The rest of my life worked much the same way. For years and years, I roamed, never ever fitting in. I became exceptionally good at existing almost anywhere, even finding stable employment wherever I went, which I eventually learned was not the same thing as belonging anywhere.

The big city offers anonymity without solitude. One may disappear into a crowd while remaining physically unable to be alone. There is comfort in finally being surrounded by lives that do not require an explanation from you. And for a long time, that worked for me.

My relationship with Vermont had been complicated long before I ever imagined living here. I first came here with Angie. My parents used to stay at Twin Mountain Farms Bed and Breakfast on Coy Hill Road, but they insisted on going alone, and my father made a point of isolating me from Vermont. During the last years of his life, Mom made it a point that Angie and I be included. The compromise was for us to stay in an outbuilding at the farm.

A decade after my father died, I bought my own farm in the same town he had tried to isolate me from. There are certain facts in my life that are so bizarre that they require very little commentary.

Middletown Springs did not immediately become home. I was rejected here at first. After spending years roaming around and never quite fitting anywhere, I realized I'd bought a house in a tiny Vermont town only to discover that I did not fit there, either.

Except this time, I stayed.

I cannot identify the moment when things changed. I doubt there was one. Life simply continued. Eventually, my books were sitting on the shelves of the local library. My photographs started appearing in town newsletters and local newspapers.

I put the steak on the grill.

A gentle breeze came through the property.

I knew it immediately in the way it moved through the trees, picking up the scent of the pines as it crossed the property. It felt identical to the breeze coming off Upper Chateaugay Lake.

For a moment, I was back at camp.

The breeze came through again. This time softer, and I knew that this would likely be the last one for the afternoon.

For most of my life, I had thought of belonging as something that happened somewhere else. Except this time, I was finally home, and had the feelings of a love I never knew.