Flatlanders

On a recent trip to the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire, I got talking to a longtime resident of the area, and asked if he was originally from here, and was told he’d only been a resident since the mid ’70s, originally from Connecticut. “Which, I guess,” he said, “makes me a Flatlander.”

There is a territorial quality to places like the hill towns and lake regions of New Hampshire, the Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Cape where, it seems, only birth and lifelong residency spares you of the slightly derogatory “Flatlander” label, or earns you the title of “Islander” or “Cape Codder.”

This piece, “Flatlanders” 48 x 36, embodies that spirit of being in the same place your entire life, a time frame necessary to either earn, or avoid, colloquial labels.