Ripton

Robert Frost spent his summers in Ripton for over two decades, writing poetry in a cabin on the Homer Noble Farm near Bread Loaf. The Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College, home to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference since 1926, sits within town boundaries, making this tiny Addison County town an unlikely literary landmark.

Chartered in 1781, Ripton climbs from the Middlebury River gorge into the heart of the Green Mountain National Forest. The town's terrain is steep and heavily wooded, with the Long Trail crossing through the highest elevations. About 596 people live here year-round — a number that would have been hard to imagine in the 1800s, when more families farmed the hillsides.

The Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, a one-mile walk through forest and meadow with plaques bearing Frost's poems, draws literary pilgrims from around the world. But for Ripton's residents, the real business happens at town meeting, where a small but engaged electorate makes decisions about the roads, the school, and the community's future.