Earlier this year, as part of a digital storytelling class, Middlebury College students Tik Root of Ripton and Paul Rosenfeld of Saint Louis set out to meet and talk with people along Vermont's Route 100. They wanted to find out how people in Vermont’s countryside and small towns are doing these days.

Sometimes called the Skiers Highway, Route 100 is a state highway that runs through central Vermont from Massachusetts to Canada. Considered to be one of the most scenic roads in New England, it passes through many small villages and long stretches of farmland and forest. For the most part it retains a decidedly rural character.

But it also runs along the backbone of the Green Mountains, past some of Vermont's most well-known resort towns. And it's a long established artery of commerce and communication, so it offered a variety of opportunities to take the cultural and economic pulse of life in Vermont today.

They visited with a young worker in a Waitsfield café, a school principal in Rochester, an auctioneer in Newport, a dairy farmer in Hyde Park and a glass blower in Jamaica.

All week during Morning Edition, we'll sample those conversations, and hear what Root and Rosenfeld discovered in their travels.