There’s a story in Vermont that goes something like this: A little boy found a toad one day, picked it up, and ran over to show his grandfather.

“Grandpa, Grandpa!” called the little boy. “Do you want to see my toad?”

Grandpa, who was an old New England farmer, looked at the toad in his grandson’s hand and thought for a minute.

Then he simply said, “He’s his own toad.”

My Dad told me this story years ago, and I’ve always remembered it because it sums up a lot of people who grow up in Northern New England. We’re our own toads; we don’t belong to anyone.

As I pondered everything that Bode Miller said in the post-super G press conference yesterday, this story was one of the first things that popped into my head.

Not that Bode is a toad. But he’s certainly his own man. And he approaches skiing and his victories differently than most.

He was really happy with how he skied in both the downhill, where he won bronze, and super G, where he took silver. Not because he medaled but because — as he’s always said — he was happy with how he skied.

Here’s how Miller described his super G race (mostly unedited): “It was an excellent race for me. Any race where I can go out of the gate with complete reckless abandon and let my physical ability and my tactical ability make the adaptations for me in the race in real time with my foot just 100 percent on the gas is a huge result for me.

“Like I said, I’m faced now with this conundrum of wanting to race with my heart and wanting to go all out. But I have hundreds of thousands of runs under my belt of tactical experience. It’s hard to ignore that. When you’re in a course, there are certain things you’re supposed to do to make it so you don’t go cart-wheeling into the fence.

“But you can’t do [them] because it will wreck your feeling of the course. It wrecks your ambition simply to go wide open.

“To face that at my age, after as much experience as I have had, I always used to do it. When I was little, there was always some coach telling me, ‘Hey, this is what you have to do if you want to not crash, or this is what you have to do if you want to win.’”

“It’s easy to ignore when it’s somebody else telling it to you. It’s not easy when it’s something that you’ve experienced hundreds of hundreds of times over and over again.

“The face is in an Olympic race like this, even if it is a one in 10 chance that it works, that’s the time to do it and it’s the most important time.”

He also talked about celebrating his skiing, and you would be correct if you guessed that he’s not necessarily celebrating his medals.

“I enjoy skiing a certain way,” he continued. “Hopefully, it leads to medals. But for a long long time, it didn’t lead to anything but crashes and lots of missed opportunities and mistakes. I had to deal with all the press and coaches pointing that out to me.”

When he won his downhill bronze medal, he said that he was celebrating all morning — before the race. “I was enjoying it as if it had already happened,” he said.

He celebrated the way he felt and the fact that “I’d overcome a lot and come to where I am and the fact that I’m still able to walk around after the crashes I’ve taken. When I went out of the gate [in the downhill], it was sort of the crescendo.”

“I’ve told you guys a million times that my favorite moment is not the press conference,” he added. “It’s not the awards ceremony. It’s just before I come across the finish line, and I’m forced to make an assessment of how I am and who I am and what I’ve done. When I can look at that as I’m coming across the finish line and I’m really excited about it, that’s the end of the exhilaration for me. And it’s all downhill from there.”

Finally, a reporter asked Miller to comment on the U.S. Ski Team’s success in the 2010 Olympics. At that point, the team had won a historic six medals (now seven). The reporter asked what the key has been to the success, and Miller lightened it up.

“Yeah, aside from the fact that we’re much better than everybody else … ,” he said to much laughter.

Then he got serious again and talked about momentum and its affect on the team.

“You need a tight group to feel the momentum,” he explained, “and this is a group of young athletes who feed off that really easily. As soon as you watch your teammate experience that joy, that excitement, it makes it much more real and accessible to the other athletes. They see it and feel a direct connection. It makes them reach for it a little more authentically.

“That’s what you’re seeing. Once that momentum starts, everyone starts to want that more. They race really aggressively and with their hearts too.”

And that’s all he said. At least after the super G.

Now I’ll hop along to the next blog . … Ribbet. Or is that the sound a frog makes?