Bless Your Headlines: Vermont’s Got a Spear-It Problem (And It’s Glorious)

Kale Chips and Caveman Spears
Only in Vermont can you pass a farmer’s market offering organic kale chips, then turn the corner and find people hurling prehistoric spears at plywood mammoths. Forget pickleball—welcome to the world of the atlatl. Yes, it’s pronounced aht-LAHT-l. Or maybe not. Even experts admit the pronunciation might have gone extinct with the mammoth. That kind of linguistic shrug is easy to like.

The Championship in Addison
In Addison, Vermont, modern-day cavemen and women have resurrected the atlatl. It’s a stick used to throw another stick farther and faster. The Northeastern Open Atlatl Championship drew everyone from anthropology nerds to kids who might otherwise be glued to TikTok. Watching middle-schoolers master a weapon once used to slay megafauna makes dodgeball look tame.

Low-Pressure Fun?
Celine Thouin, a Franklin Pierce alum and atlatl champion, called it “low-pressure, really fun.” Low-pressure? If I faced a reindeer target while holding a glorified spear, I’d sweat harder than a caveman trying to invent fire.

History Meets Hands-On Learning
This is experimental archaeology at its finest. Why settle for textbooks when you can hurl a projectile 800 feet across a field? That’s almost three football fields. Tom Brady wishes.

The Ultimate DIY Tool
Douglas Bassett, former president of the World Atlatl Association (yes, it exists), described it as “a stick by which you can throw another stick.” Not Shakespeare, but accurate. The atlatl is history’s best DIY hack: when your arm isn’t long enough, build a longer one out of wood.

Summer Camp Vibes
Winning wasn’t the main focus. The vibe felt more like summer camp than an Olympic trial. Kids, parents, and retirees all tapped into their inner caveperson. In a world where soccer parents yell at referees, maybe we need more sports where the point is simple: “throw stick far, have fun.”

Pageantry and Flannel
Competitors raising their darts in the opening ceremony gave off Hunger Games energy. But here it came with flannel shirts instead of political undertones.

An Ancient Glow-Up
The atlatl may be 15,000 years old, but it’s having a 2025 glow-up. It’s part history lesson, part backyard fun, and part excuse to yell “Watch out, I’m armed!” without getting a Homeland Security visit.

So, bless your headlines, Vermont. While the rest of us are doomscrolling, you’re out there tossing spears like it’s 13,000 B.C. Maybe that’s the reminder we need—that sometimes the best way to move forward is to throw a stick far into the past.