Growing up in Vermont, my least favorite time of the year was stick season. That month (sometimes months) between fall and winter when there’s no leaves or snow on the trees. Everything feels cold and dreary and gray and seasonal depression has kicked in for a lot of us. It looks the same outside everyday because it’s too warm for snow but too cold for the leaves and grass and greenery. 

When I was little in the mornings, my parents would dress me in a sweatshirt and winter jacket and jeans or leggings and walk out to the car, our breath illuminated by the cold. The leather seats were always freezing and we had to wait for the windshield to defog before we could start our drive. My mom or dad -depending on what day it was- popped a CD in the car that still didn’t have blue-tooth. “Ophelia” by The Lumineers, or “Electric Feel” by MGMT spilled out of the little green Subaru’s speakers and we started driving through the rock lined highways of Waterbury. 

When I first heard the song “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, I thought it encapsulated this feeling perfectly. Really, any folk song reminds me of Vermont, but this one is just so perfect for this time of year when you are starting to feel the emotional effects of the cold weather. It’s kind of sad but also kind of hopeful. He talks about feeling alone and missing someone that is no longer in his life, someone that was his other half and that completed him and he now has to live with feeling like half himself. By the end of the song, he’s come to terms with the fact that even though they may never be coming back into his life, he still has to go on living and that this fact will “have to do.”

So, when this song came on the speaker on the bus on the way home from an away game this soccer season, it immediately became one of my favorites. After the first line of the chorus, I was hooked. I knew the feeling that Kahan was conveying so well it made my heart hurt. And I knew that my childhood friend from Vermont (who happened to move here at the same time I did and plays soccer) did too. We belted out the song with the rest of our team, but to us it meant something a little different. It reminded us of home. 

If you are on social media, you’ve probably heard this song or Kahan’s other song “Homesick” from the same album (which is called Stick Season).  Kahan released his third album on October 14th of this year. “Stick Season,” which was released in the summer as a single, has over 60 million streams globally. 

A trend has risen from “Homesick” which talks about growing up in a small New England town (I’m sure that if you give it a listen almost all of you will relate to it). It immediately took off and has been very popular on social media ever since.

I highly recommend listening to it. Even if you can’t relate to it in a special way, it’s still very catchy and a great song in general. You can listen to “Stick Season” and other songs by Noah Kahan on any music streaming platform.