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This week on our program, Steve Ember and Barbara Klein take you on a trip through the northeastern state of Vermont, part of the area known as New England. Each fall, people travel to Vermont to see the colorful autumn leaves. In winter, people come to ski and snowboard in the mountains. In the warmer months, they go on river-rafting trips and camp and enjoy other outdoor activities. Only about six hundred thousand people live in Vermont. That makes it the second least-populated state in the country after Wyoming. And the state is small not just in population. Vermont is forty-fifth out of the fifty states in territory. It has just twenty-four thousand square kilometers of land. In addition, it has almost nine hundred fifty square kilometers covered by water. What Vermont lacks in size, it makes up for in beauty. It is known as the Green Mountain State. The name comes from the Green Mountains, which divide the state up and down the center. In fact, the name Vermont comes from the French "verd mont," meaning green mountain. Along the northern border of Vermont is the Canadian province of Quebec. Vermont is bordered by Massachusetts on the south, New Hampshire on the east and New York on the west. A century ago, forests covered less than one-third of Vermont. Trees were being cut down for farmland and forest products faster than they could be replaced. That has changed. Today forests cover more than three-fourths of the state. | 
