Upstater

Vogue Magazine contributor Jonathan Van Meter lived and worked in Manhattan for years until one day, like so many NYC ex-pats, he got a hankering for a life closer to the one he grew up with on his farm New Jersey, so he and his partner packed up and moved to Woodstock, where they purchased and renovated a century-old cottage on five acres. “I was re-creating—reclaiming—my most fundamental, and in some ways most complicated, boyhood memories,” wrote Van Meter in a recent piece for Vogue, “those middle years between seven and ten when I spent a lot of time by myself in the woods, building a fort, catching frogs and turtles—lonely and yet somehow exhilarated by a newfound sense of freedom.” He goes on to extol the virtue of Woodstock’s hippieness and affability, explaining how everyone in Woodstock is so friendly that he felt a sense of guilt for honking his horn at an old woman driving at Subaru at an intersection. Read more of Van Meter’s transformation from hardcore urbanite to countrified Woodstock denizen here on Vogue’s website.