Vermont Drops Quarantine Restrictions for Fully Vaccinated Travelers
It’s not over yet but damn is that a rainbow poking out of the hurricane’s edge?
February 25, 2021
And the line of yellow license plates streamed unmolested into Narnia
I’ve been having a hell of a good season here in New York, as you’ll see at the bottom of this email, blasting up and down and across the state, following the snow in a season-long exploration of all the backwoods lost-in-time ski hills that are Vermont-far but Midwest-big, an exercise in novelty and checklist wandering that has been more satisfying than I could have imagined.
Still, a Northeast ski season without Vermont feels weird. Like if the Yankees suddenly stopped playing baseball but the rest of the MLB kept on. Those towering mountains, with their high-speed out-of-state infrastructure and their deep snowpacks and their sprawling trail networks, anchor our regional ski culture. We need them.
Some of us are about to get them back. As of Tuesday, fully vaccinated travelers can visit the state without quarantine two weeks after receiving their final dose. Quarantine requirements remain in effect for everyone else. This will not save Vermont’s ski season. The number of people who are both avid skiers and fully vaccinated is likely quite low. And there isn’t a lot of season left. But as the state with the nation’s strictest travel requirements acknowledges our progress fighting Covid and cracks open the borders, it’s creating a sunlight-through-the-clouds moment. This pandemic won’t last forever.
New case counts in the U.S. have plummeted since a January high of more than 300,000 new daily infections to less than 75,000 yesterday. It’s nothing to thump your bulletproof Uncle Sam red-white-and-blue vest about. Deaths remain high, at more than 3,200 yesterday. Vaccinations putter along, stalled by last week’s weather and other factors. But we appear to be getting there.
“There,” in this case, is back to an America where we can freewheel around in our 14-wheel drive SUVs, the state borders curiosities rather than roadblocks. And yes good people of Vermont, I realize this year-long break from weekending New Yorkers driving 80 in a 35 and doing dumbass New Yorker things like not pulling ahead to the first pump on a gas station island has in some ways been a relief. But listen Pal, we’re not always exactly fist-pumping the sky to see you either, in your green license plates and your Subarus driving 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. But we need each other and you know that. And while most of us will not be back this year, we will be eventually. So clear the left lane and re-open the sushi bar. We’re coming.
Posted from the Storm Skiing Journal
