NONFICTION - Aug. 4, 1991

VERMONT PEOPLE text and photos by Peter Miller (Peter Miller, RD 1 Box 1515, Waterbury, Vt. 05767: $35; 119 pp.). Step aside, snail darter. Gangway, lousewort. America’s real endangered species is the Vermonter. Like the elephant, this purely Yankee specimen, rock-ribbed as the land itself, is running out of room, chased into hiding by summer-homing yuppies. Miller has tracked down the survivors; got them on film; got them on paper. From octogenarian farmers Will and Rowena Austin (above), through taciturn trappers and one-room teachers, to Otis Brickett, an honest-to-God dowser, Miller has memorialized them all. The black-and-white of his photos is austerely appropriate, and his written vignettes are even better than the pictures. “Self-reliant” and “independent as all get out” are Miller’s people. And vanishing.