FALL DOWN AND CHANGE

Signs at a fervently Republican household. Their Trump signs stayed up for months in 2016. The display felt too hostile, so I took the photo from my car.

Jarring, those political signs in the landscape. It’s the best time of year right now, so that’s why they startle. I admit that when spring comes I say that’s the best time of year, especially if the winter has been a tough one (that is, lots of snow) or a boring one (no snow, just dreary weather). Yet it’s fall that is the most ephemeral. And all the more precious for it. Fall can't be contained. You can’t know exactly when the colors will peak, or how red the reds will be, how orange the oranges, or when the wind will suddenly blow all the color away, and when the frost will put an end to it all. 

Only a week or two has passed since I wrote this,­ and the flaming trees and shrubs have already begun to fade. I can tell time is moving on by the new visitors to the bird feeder, freshly filled, the birds I'll see in winter: nuthatches, titmice, chickadees, purple finches, woodpeckers. The feeder is in its winter location now, near the rear windows so birds can be watched from inside. Ken’s favorite chair is in prime position to see them. Our bird book is still nearby.

The view from what I still regard as Ken's chair.

Time.  It moves on, doesn’t it.  

It was two short years ago that Ken died. Two years ago when Ken left Vermont. When Ken left behind all that he loved. Odd things of his show up now and then. Digging in a basket of random items that managed to sit untouched in the mud room since 2016, I found an altimeter, a nail clipper, a tiny lens snug in its leather case (for examining lichen and other small objects), a camping cup, an outdoor knife (all-purpose I guess, for cutting rope or gutting fish), two pocket knives, a comb, a compass, two tire pressure gauges (given that I have one in my car, this makes three), a whistle (if in need of help while hiking), BB pellets, clip-on shades, and pair of work gloves. I could tell a tale about each of these, because every item has a direct tie to something Ken enjoyed doing. They ended up in this basket because they were so random ("Where does this go, anyway?") and infrequently used. Maybe even forgotten. Neither of us might have used the camping cup again, or have need of a knife, or BB's or even a compass, or a whistle. The lens, the work gloves–yes, probably.

Although these things were close at hand, not many had been used in a while. Except the gloves.

Our needs change. Time changes us, as it changes the world around us. Has changed the world around us. Hugely, in only two years.

Ken voted just a few weeks before he died. He didn't learn the result. 

He could never have imagined that everything he represented and so much of what he believed in–the beauty and logic of science is one small example–would be seen by our current leaders (leaders? is that even the right word?) as just so much rubbish. He couldn’t have known that now lies are presented as facts, that science is mocked and scorned, that preservation of the natural environment is subservient to private interests, that our society is poisoned by anger, racism, and hate. That our president incites and encourages these basest elements of our nature while pretending to do the opposite, accusing others of the very things he does himself. 

I cannot imagine how Ken would have dealt with all this, had he been able.

ICELAND: BRAVE NEW WORLD

An iconic photo:  Tiny houses lend scale to a gigantic landscape

Land of the Future?

A film I saw recently was a thriller filmed in Iceland. Most of the scenes took place in dark stormy winter with howling winds and blowing snow. Scenes that took place in doorways–and there were a number of them–showed the actors chatting right there, the door wide open. No one seemed to mind. Obviously, I figured, this was for filming purposes because people don’t do that in winter. No one leaves a front door open. Not even for a minute. But who cares if the open door lets in a little cold air when you have infinite heat?  Not to mention hot water, really hot water, in endless amounts.

Iceland is 100% energy independent, generating the cleanest energy from renewable sources (geothermal and some hydro), an ideal sought by many countries and achieved to date by––hmm, none, actually.  Admittedly it’s a tall order for countries that don’t have Iceland’s unique conditions: only 350,000 people, a location atop a volcanic hot spot (with tectonic plates moving apart 2.5 centimeters per year, by the way), extensive water power, a well-educated population, and a mindset that favors innovation.

When you can cook bread by putting a raw loaf in the ground, you don’t have a heating problem.

Cooking a type of brown bread, local recipe. It takes about a day to bake.  

Steam, not smoke, comes out of the earth in this valley.

A schematic of Iceland's thermal fields; to the west is the American tectonic plate, to the east the Eurasian plate. The white splotches are glaciers.

Jarðböðinn thermal spa, one of many, the most famous of which is the Blue Lagoon. Thermal spas are a delightful extra that comes with volcanos.

Ahead of the curve socially as well, Iceland sees itself as having total gender equality, as well as an openness and embracing of everyone declaring themselves LGBT or Q.  Iceland is, in fact, our guide explained, a matriarchal society. Women are fully empowered–totally equal, and have been for ages. The current prime minister is a woman, although the president is a man. Female power is often cited in the sagas, where women are frequently described as powerful and as ready to wield a weapon as any Viking hero. There were hints here and there that this equality may not be quite so thorough (example: at the Ocean Cluster organization all the “suits” were males, and it was a female who served as receptionist and guide even though she held advanced degrees. Could just be chance, right?) Immigration is favored too, but with Iceland still notably homogeneous, this may yet have to be tested.

Viking hero, Lief Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, Viking hero

A show of power:  This is Go∂afoss

Besides being ranked as one of the countries with the most educated population overall, Iceland has an almost non-existent level of unemployment.  Farming, according to our guide, is often farmed out (so to speak) to outsiders, as are lower level jobs in the service fields (restaurants, hotels, shops, tourism in general). Farming, not in the least resembling farming in Vermont, seems to consist mostly of having sheep and Icelandic horses graze the fields.  (The genes of both horse and sheep are ancient; no sheep, horses or other animals are allowed into the country.)  Even hay baling looks surprisingly enlightened, what with pink plastic bales supporting breast cancer, blue in support of bladder cancer, and green, black or white plastic covers existing as local color choices. Many farmers have turned to hosting tourists to fill empty barns while they live elsewhere. Greenhouse owners run their "farms" remotely; they are almost completely automated to the point where those owners may live in Spain if they like and check on their crops via the internet.  There is no agriculture as we know it.  Despite the Gulf Stream keeping the climate just short of Arctic, there is not enough warmth or sun year round to support crops of fruits or vegetables. 

A huge greenhouse growing tomatoes for Iceland and, cleverly, including a cafe that offers tomato soup.

Only horses are missing from this farm photo.  Mostly green hay bales employed here.

Land of the Past

Tin framed (hence "old") buildings in Reykjavik's center; the Hotel Centrum where we stayed for 3 days

A neighborhood in old Reykjavik. Newer areas looks like ordinary suburbs.

Except for buildings that date from the 1920’s or so, everything looks new. Is new. (Even the trees are new; major efforts at reforestation began only 30 years ago.)  There are no 14th or 15th century homes, ruins or monuments.  Vikings, the first settlers, arrived in the 870’s. They chopped down the existing birch forests and built with wood, stone and turf.  When the forests were gone, wood came from Norway.  It wasn’t until the 1870’s that tin was introduced and swiftly became the material of choice for outer walls and roofs.  Color arrived, too.  The oldest houses in town centers (notably Reykjavik) date from the 1920’s with a handful from the late 1800’s.  Then came concrete.  The architectural shape of choice seems to be the square and the rectangle.  Sometimes this works really well. Often, though, the lack of exterior decoration and the endless boxy-ness has a soulless quality. It’s mostly the older houses that look inviting.

A Viking history buff build this reconstruction of a sod dwelling.  It is surprisingly roomy inside, if dark.

A photograph of the sort of housing most settlers had before the arrival of new materials.

The crude kitchen area of one of those old houses. The housewife looks pretty grim.

After the Viking period there were dark days.  Danish rule lasted from 1262 until 1944, the day of independence.  But there were many dark periods. The plague swept through Iceland twice in the 1300’s and again in the 1400’s killing nearly half the population, the volcano Laki erupted in 1783 and killed a quarter of the population, and there were several unusually cold winters, plus the Spanish flu that arrived early in the 20th century. Life here was often hard. Not to mention the dangers faced daily by fishermen.

This interior had wooden walls, but life was generally still pretty difficult, even in the 1920's.

How to account for all the churches.  Their numbers are a thing of mystery. Nearly every farm has its own church, generally a small building resembling a chapel, made out of wood.  And then there are the town churches.  Every town has a church or two and at least one of them in nearly every case is likely to be a striking––as in you-can’t-look-away­­––modern building of avant-garde design, in concrete.  The old farm churches may have been built by farmers because their homes were so isolated they were unable to make their way to a town in order to go to church.  It may also have been simply something one did if one could afford it (wood, after all, had to be imported)––a way of displaying one’s faith. Or was it built ias a talisman against the hope that lava wouldn't eat you up?  At any rate, in these modern times church attendance is said to be very low, with only 10% of the population reporting that they go to church occasionally, and 50% saying they never go at all.  (Marriage too may be fading, with only about 1/3 of babies born in 2014 born to married parents––unless, of course, they married afterwards.)  I watched a film on the plane that took place in Iceland. The husband in the story was always leaving for choir practice.  I’m guessing he went to a church for that.  Still, the church mystery endures.

Old church above the town of Vik (Vik means harbor).  The town below is very near the glacier and volcano (unseen behind the hills).  If and when it erupts, they may only have 15 minutes to evacuate.

Per caption above, volcano Katla, one of Iceland's largest, lives right under the ice cap behind Vik.  

In the small town of Stykkisholmur the church dominates the hill at right. It may not be the most extreme design.

Another spectacular waterfall.  This one is Gullfoss.

The Dark Side. Or Isn't There One?

Winters are long and hard and, no doubt, depressing.  (I admit I am writing this on a dreary rainy day in Vermont in October when the sun is already setting as early as 6:30.)  What do people do during such long winters?  Well, they are either reading books or writing them.  Or perhaps knitting. Here’s a statistic:  More books are published per capita in Iceland than in any other country. There would have to be 328 million books published in this country in order to come up with a similar statement. (An actual book count for the US is closer to under half of one million.)  

The English language section with its dark titles. The larger towns have excellent bookstores.

You don’t have to read much Icelandic fiction before you start imagining the country suffers from (a) a drinking or drug problem (see Arnoldur Indrio∂ason, for example, for tales of a divorced detective with a drug user daughter); and (b) depression.  I thought the drug problem would be severe. Not so.  But it used to be.  The whole country seems to have pulled together recently to draw teens away from drugs and get them involved in activities.  It worked. (“How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs,” The Atlantic, January 19, 2017.) As for depression, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD has 36 member countries, including the US) “Iceland is the most depressed of all European Countries.”  I always wonder what the questions are in surveys like this.  In any event, the OECD is responsible for a few other interesting pieces of data, like the fact that more women are depressed than men, and Icelanders use more anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping pills and so on than the other member countries.  Well, I guess there has to be something of a downside.

Yet another beauty:  Skógafoss

But did I mention that Iceland has no army, the police aren’t armed, the crime rate is practically non-existent (there are currently 26 people in jail in the whole country), and, although lots of people own guns, they are reserved exclusively for hunting? 

Speaking of hunting, what, exactly does one hunt in a place almost entirely without any wild animals?  Although there are some 500,000 or so sheep, plenty of horses, and swans everywhere, only the arctic fox (the fur of which I saw adorning numerous clothing items for sale in some shops), is a native wild animal. (I heard about reindeer imported many years ago existing somewhere in the country although I didn’t see any.)  Do people hunt foxes?  (They're pretty cute, I have to say. )  Birds, maybe?  Puffins? Puffins??  Puffins are kind of a mascot of the country, cherished by children who help them on their migratory routes when they are misled by the lights of a town, and yet you will find them on menus here and there. Somebody must be hunting them. Whale meat is also on some menus. Reykjavik’s three-ship whaling industry, with heavy irony, uses the same dock as the local whale watch fleet. Our guide said only tourists eat whale meat. I suppose some people get a thrill from eating something exotic. Wait a minute. I once ate a witchetty grub in the Australian outback and was kind of proud of that. Witchetty grubs don't come with ecological histories attached, but still...

On the right, Greenland shark (yes, really). These sharks are the unfortunate bycatch of trawling. This company takes them and allows the shark meat to ferment so that it will lose its toxic level of ammonia, and then hangs it for several months until it is deemed ready to eat.  An acquired taste in the extreme sense of the phrase. I tasted it, and found it pretty horrible, even when followed up with a shot of Icelandic schnapps (at left) called Brennavin.  Greenland shark is a national dish and regarded as a special treat. Other northern isles (the Hebrides, for example) have a similar culinary history of fermenting meat and fish.

Our guide, Kolfinna Baldvinsdottir, holding a sheep head, another holiday treat. There is plenty to eat in the head, including (yikes!) the eyes. In supermarkets the meat section is wholly composed of about a thousand cuts and treaments of lamb.

Then there is the downside of Iceland's dangers. You could:

(a) fall down a waterfall,
(b) stumble into a fumarole,
(c) get lost in a lava field,
(d) drown in the ocean,
(e) fall off a cliff,
(f) freeze to death in wind and rain,
(g) whoops! wrong temperature thermal pool,
(h) drive your undersized Kia into a river and be swept away,
(i) be swept away by meltwater from a glacier caused by
(j) an erupting volcano and be rained on by ash and rocks,
(k) get trampled by a herd of sheep,
(l) get lost and taken by a troll, or
(m) eat too much Greenland shark and die.

But there are voluntary rescue squads stationed all over Iceland ready to save you.  

You could drown:  waves and wind came up suddenly, about a half hour after this photo was taken, during a whale watching trip, and seas were growing seriously enough to seek a harbor ASAP.  (All passengers had been required to wear survival suits.)

You could fall off a cliff.  Basalt columns and other formations on the Snaefellsnes peninsula

You could get lost in a lava field, or fall into a hole.  The lava is covered with lichen, the first colonizers of rock.

You could fall into a fumarole.  This place reminds me of Yellowstone.

You could get lost. (This photo is very confusing.)  And be taken by a troll.

Ah, but if I lived in Iceland I would miss the chipmunks, the squirrels, the racoons, the snakes, the bears, the deer, the coyotes, the robins, the hawks, the rodents––all of them.  And the forests.  The country I live in is a different place in so many ways.  We are too big, too heterogeneous to have a future that is like Iceland's present.

But we could take a leaf from their book.

AND A WATER GARDEN TOO

I hadn’t thought much about having a water garden.  But with a natural pool, you get one.

Last August the plants around the new pool consisted of about 90% reeds or sedges and some pickerel weed, all striving to help filter the water in the swim part of the pool.  They were too young then to do much filtration, and water clarity was fragile. It was a brand new ecosystem.  Without the weekly addition of algae-eating bacteria the water would have gotten a greenish cast and there could be surface gunk too. It was necessary to add algae-eating bacteria to help control nutrients in the pond water, thereby depriving the algae of food.  The bacteria also act to transform some of the dissolved nitrogen compounds that could become algae food into nitrogen gas that diffuses into the air.  A weekly cup or two of added bacteria did the trick.  (None of the chemicals used to clarify normal swimming pools can be used in a natural pool.)

August, right after completion

The sedges and reeds were nice, but not particularly exciting.  Then in midsummer pool builder Tim Lindemyer added some robust plants to fill empty spots: water lilies, irises and dwarf cattails to replace or add to the pickerel weed that was growing far too meekly.  With the echinacea in full bloom by this time and the grasses now mature, both serving as backdrop to the water plants, an attractive layered harmony has emerged. 

August 2018. Skimmer and algae grabber in the foreground.

A modest (or maybe not so modest) variety of creatures live here, but not fish.  Fish would only complicate the already dynamic ecology, adding nutrients instead of removing them, especially if they were to multiply. But there are newts, some tadpoles, the usual pond bugs, and frogs.  They found their own way here.  A garter snake was spotted one day last month, swimming!  In July we often found the larval shells of dragonflies. The dragonflies may have been born from eggs laid in the water.  Probably some of the frogs, too..

There hasn’t been a glimmer of surface algae growth this summer, nor the slightest greenish cast to the swim water.  None of that. However.  This summer’s bane has been hairy algae, a completely different type of algae, one that likes to cling to the bottom of the pool, attaching itself to stones.  It is amazing stuff.  Completely benign, happily, it has the capacity to double in volume in a short time, unhappily.  This entails nearly daily scooping of the stuff.  I pull out what I can (some portion inevitably refuses to give up its grip and prepares to regrow in the same place) and toss it in the field. I leave much of it as-is in the plant area because frogs seem to enjoy sitting in the midst of it.  Besides serving as cover for frogs, It should be good for something.  But what?  Could its presence have discouraged the other form of algae, that surface stuff?  Could the two varieties have been vying for favor?

A blue of hairy algae covering some stones 8 feet underwater

A sample of hairy algae out of the water. "Hairy" is not a misnomer.

There are many ways to get rid of hairy algae.  One suggestion I came across advised encouraging your children to pull it out.  Fun.  I can see that, kids tossing the stuff around, putting it on somebody's hair, etc.  Seriously, though, pulling it out with a stick is pretty effective. I have a telescoping pole with a paint roller holder attached to the end.  Even better, though, is donning my mask and snorkel and getting to work on it with my hands.  The best solution may simply be not filling the pool with hard water.  Hairy algae, as anyone with a fish tank and has fought the stuff can tell you, loves a high pH. And, boy, do I have hard water.  Filled now by unsoftened well water, the pond's pH sits around 7.8, the cliff edge of okay.  I plan to fix this by rerouting a hose connection through the water softener.

Lily and lily pads in the raindrops

Will this weigh the balance in another direction?  It will be interesting to see how this little ecosystem will develop in another year or so. This fall I will trim the sedges and cattails in the plant area.  I will move the water lilies (rooted in pots) to the shallow part of the swim area to overwinter.   The filter pump will be shut down and stored. Ice will eventually cover it all.  Then I will wait.  I will forget about it.  When the pond awakens in the spring, I wonder, will it be in balance?  Will it tip this way or that?  What will be the next dynamic in this little water world?

HERE ON MARS

[A rant]

Metaphor?:  A tree found its way to survive; if one direction doesn't work, try another.

I lied.  Not exactly on Mars, but sometimes it feels like it, being at a safe remove–for now­– from events that explode through the media almost hourly. It’s so exhausting I’ve become inured. Every day thirty or forty emails pile up begging for help for the desperate, the endangered, the forgotten, or to fight yet another horror.  How has it come to this?

[Irrelevant photos included to lighten things up.]

A deliberate burn on the field across the road

Life on earth wasn’t always like this. Shootings have become a common expression of anger, sometimes racial, sometimes personal, always deadly.  With guns close to hand it’s easy to let loose.  I have been learning that shootings can happen anywhere, at any time, and to anyone.  And in our physical universe, with increasing and frightening frequency, sections of our country are crazy with fire while others are battered again and again by tornados, and yet another town nearly drowns under unexpected deluges.  The victims of much of this social and physical disorder are–big surprise–the poorest among us.  But hey, if you’re not poor, you’re okay, aren’t you?  

An amazing dragonfly (swamp darner) that appeared by the front door and stayed long enough to have its picture taken.

One morning hundreds of these appeared on the lawn.  Not spider webs, but "dollar spot fungus" that disappeared as the dew dried.

I hear almost nothing about the kind of country Trump and his ilk and his supporters would like to live in. I only hear about what they don’t want.  

But what exactly is their vision of society?  

Has it been given serious thought, beyond attempts to be rid of what they don’t like?  Have they imagined a perfect society, and taken lessons from history?  (In Trump’s case, that’s a “no.”)  Imagine the kind of country this would be if current directions continued, unhampered.  The federal government would be hobbled.  Made small.  The social contract, the bargain society made with government in the first place to provide order and–one hopes–justice, could turn into something more along the lines of, say, a pre-nup.  We, the people, could opt in to what we like, opt out of what we don’t.  Freedom!  (Why, for example, fund public education if you’re not going to use it yourself?  Why fund anything you're not going to use yourself? What good are immigrants to me? Why should I pay taxes to support people who can’t support themselves?  Why should I feed the hungry? Let ‘em eat cake! Blah, blah, blah.)  White people would have an improved kind of largesse–free to be whatever they/we wanted to be, although–caveat–the wealthy would naturally be the ones to fully reap the benefits befitting an elite among elites.  (History demonstrates how well white people have ruled the world to date, hasn’t it? We fuck up in classy ways that make history reading fun!)  As for health care, it would remain non-existent for the many but, hey, it would be a choice, and choices are good.  The quality of our rivers, lakes and air would be degraded, but not everywhere, of course, and you can picture the likeliest locations.  Far away.  Free enterprise could be relieved of its remaining chains. (We could return to the early days of the industrial age, freedom-wise. Child labor, anyone?)  

The first mowing of the season, early this time.

Yield:  41 bales

Here, then, is my respite. From this angle, nothing looks different to me. It’s a stretch, but I could pretend I’m on Mars.  That is, if I wasn’t aware in print and electronic media of what was going on out there. In reality, I eat it up.  It’s the I-can’t-look-away syndrome, as applied to a train wreck.  I often think about how Ken missed this horrific time, leaving this planet only days before the November 2016 elections. (What would he have thought of a president, the Leader of our Country–a guy without a moral compass who denigrates others, sows hatred, thinks of himself before anyone or anything including the country over which he presides, a creature ignorant of history, of science, a foul womanizer, a stupendous liar, and, alas, a guy who can’t even spell. And lacking taste, too: In his New York City days he was called the “Liberace of developers.”  Hah!)  I know very well what Ken would have thought. 

I can almost hear him.  But I know the road to where we are now was already laid before 2016, and we were already traveling it even before the election.  We weren’t sure it would lead us to this.   

A tree frog, the size of a quarter, likes to climb into the umbrella and has done this repeatedly.

First hike this season to Buck Mountain, looking west to the Adirondacks

Scene of a wine tasting.  Another irrelevant photo.  Happy summer!

[There.  End of rant.  Isn't that better?]

ROAD STORIES

The Maple Street entrance to the old road. Around the bend it becomes more trail than road. 

Sometimes you have to celebrate things that didn’t work out.  Or things that were left to fall apart.  This is about two of those.  

In 1979 a local guy (I’ll call him Fred) bought 28 acres of forested land, part of which is behind my field.  It’s the kind of purchase you (if you lived up here) would assume was for hunting purposes, because the piece was landlocked; no road led to it.  Logging could be problematic.  You could walk into it by way of a trail, although what begins as a road suitable for a tractor or an ATV, and has been used by a local farmer for getting feed to cows in the adjoining field, soon reverts to a trail once you pass the cow field.  

The trail heads down to the marsh.

The trail begins in Waltham, right next door in other words, and runs along the back of the field behind my house and continues through one or two other properties until it comes to a major impediment: a marsh created, and still being improved upon, by beavers. It takes up again after that gap, and just beyond is reinforced by also serving as the VAST––Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, snowmobilers to most of us––trail. Near Route 17 the VAST takes a left whereas the trail seems to come to an end with no clear route through a farm's back yard. What the “road” once connected to after that is anybody’s guess, although it probably linked up with what is now Field Days Road on the other side of Route 17.  The old road/trail hasn’t been maintained or repaired, or used, for that matter except for walkers and the occasional ATV.  In some places it has probably been misplaced.  

Fred thought maybe he could change that.  

Vermont’s mountain ranges run north-south, the spine of the Appalachians.  Almost all the early roads in Vermont ran parallel to the range.  It was always harder and trickier to build roads that ran through or over the mountains.  When Vermont became a state in 1791 this seems to have prompted some serious road building.  A case in point:  Shortly after 1791 the General Assembly voted to “view, survey, lay out, and alter or turn said road from Vergennes” south through at least nine other named towns to end at “Colonel Elisha Averill’s in Pawlet,” a town not very far north of Bennington.  It was to be called the Legislative Highway.  In 1812 New Haven (my town) laid out its portion and dubbed that segment the 1812 Highway. 

By 1995 this road had long disappeared from maps.  It had also mostly disappeared from sight.  In fact, it had disappeared so thoroughly that in 1926 the New Haven Board of Selectmen (we now call them Selectboards) voted to discontinue the road, officially closing it, thereby ending any commitment for improvements or maintenance.  And that, they thought, was that.

Fred had other ideas.  After many years rueing his inaccessable purchase, he decided to take action.  He would rue no longer.  He did some research, and in 1996 he petitioned the county court, arguing that the New Haven Board had no authority to close this segment of what was now called (laughably) the “North-South Highway” since it was, historically at least, part of the much longer road that extended clear to Bennington.  The county court ruled against Fred.  Undaunted, he appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court.  In its wisdom that court found the Board had indeed illegally closed the road in 1926 because it did not have the jurisdiction to do so; each of the eighteen towns along the Legislative Highway’s now moribund route would have had to formally agreed to the closure, since the New Haven portion was merely a segment.  Despite the thankless efforts on the part of one neighboring landowner (and owner of the swamped segment) who obtained the written approval of the governing body of each of the now eighteen towns in the road’s path and hoped to have them meet and agree to close the road officially, no such meeting ever took place. Doing New Haven a favor wasn’t high on those towns' agendas and, worse, the town of New Haven apparently didn’t give a damn. The trail/road’s status remained in technical limbo.

Until one day, when I saw someone I didn’t recognize on a tractor pulling a brush-hog at the back of my field. It wasn't clear who would choose to do this, or why.  The brush-hogger was, I learned later, a local acquaintance of Fred’s and, at the time, a New Haven Selectboard member who shared Fred’s mindset and was prepared to right perceived wrongs as he saw them.  I'll call him Donald.  After making his way cutting brush in my field Donald proceeded to my neighbor’s where he cut whatever was in his way–riding roughshod sounds like a good description–and replied in no uncertain terms to a neighbor who asked what he was doing on her property that he was operating in his official Selectboard capacity.  In reality, the Board had no idea what Donald was doing.  Donald drove on, passing closely by the next landowner who was out trimming his own brush, and letting that landowner know his was a hostile act.  Donald plowed right into the marsh for a number of yards before it became obvious he would be bogged down for good if he went an inch further. 

The "road" exits the forest at the left and (theoretically, at least) enters the marsh. A new beaver lodge can be seen at right, rear.

From another angle the beaver lodge is barely visible at far left.

The rest of the story can be told quickly.  Donald continued to carry on in many, mostly unpleasant, ways about this “illegality” (i.e., the wrongful methodology of road-closure in 1926). While he envisioned a paved road of county highway dimensions with cars and trucks driving back and forth, it seems no one (except possibly Fred) shared this vision.  Fred wanted access for himself, not necessarily for the rest of the world.  As Donald had essentially shoved this issue in the faces of the Selectboard members, the Board felt it had to do something, so it voted to spend $5,000 to survey the old road and at least establish where the darned thing actually was. That completed, and Donald by then no longer a Selectperson, the Board members seemed happy to have the issue behind them.  They made no commitment, nor is it likely they ever will, to maintain, repair or much less improve the road/trail.  I don’t know if Fred has other ideas.  Donald seems to have other fish to fry and has been busy opposing solar projects.

The "road" roughly followed the line of trees at the edge of my field.
A tiny red marker (at the end of a pole, middle left third of the photo) is a leftover survey marker.

Carly stands next to a new impediment on the "road."  The tree fell partially in late winter and an April storm brought it down significantly lower. 

And once upon a time there was (almost) another road: What the Legislative Highway could, perhaps, have been?

The designated path of the Green Mountain Parkway.

If you’d lived in Vermont before the interstates were built, you might have wept at the isolation.  When I was about seven or eight years old and lived in New York City my family began spending summers in Vermont.  We sometimes shopped at a little store in Newfane that had a butcher.  My mother got into conversation with the butcher, and he recounted how when he and his wife first moved up from New York City his wife cried and cried for their entire first winter. This made no sense to me because I was always so happy to be in Vermont. Why would anyone cry about that?

The building of the interstates, I-89 and I-91, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s ended that isolation and changed everything. It’s no good arguing any longer whether that was for the better or the worse because the change happened, and it's hard to imagine it otherwise.  But some changes are better thwarted, or killed at birth.

Lots of ideas get proposed because they are the thing of the moment, or because some other place has something that is judged to be really cool.  North Carolina began to build the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1936.  It must have been seen as a really cool thing, a marvel, years before everyone started owning not just one, but two or three cars. The very idea of driving on a highway like this evokes a 1950’s car ad (“Let’s go for a Sunday drive!”), engine purring as you drift over mountaintops with views to both sides, no traffic lights, no distractions.  Thrilling.  But now, not so much.  Today a highway on mountaintops may be seen for what it really is, an infringement on nature, every summit conquered by cars. The mountains themselves become less alluring.  You drive around curve after endless curve–not to even contemplate driving all 400-plus miles of it–and everything begins to look the same. Nature becomes boring. 

Is this really alluring? (From the Blue Ridge Parkway website).  Maybe if it was a trail...

What a terrific idea, Vermont movers and shakers thought when they learned about the new Skyline Drive (first proposed in 1924) in Virginia and the Blue Ridge Parkway (proposed in 1935).  Imagine: driving on the mountaintops!  In 1935 Vermonters proposed the Green Mountain Parkway that would run the length of the state, a north-south road, just like the southern parkways.  The mountains of Vermont are not as gentle, however, as the mountains of Virginia or North Carolina, so it wouldn’t have traveled over, say, Camel’s Hump or Mount Mansfield summits without blasting them to pieces, but it might have come close.

The plan was defeated, though not exactly handily, in a state-wide referendum.  The issue was complicated, the forces for building were powerful, and it tore the populace apart.  It wasn't a question of good conservationists versus bad developers.  On the pro side were the progressives, those with "modern" views, who wanted Vermont to be more like the rest of the country, a view held by important people and entities, including the leading newspapers as well as the federal government. The prospect of jobs, 16,000 of them, so soon after the Great Depression, was not negligible.  On the other side was fear, fear of a road opening the state to "outsiders," fear of involvement of the federal government through its land-taking alongside the road, and a concern that the road would literally divide the state in two. The fear of outsiders was itself complicated, as "outsider" incorporated notions of difference and unsavory associations that linked to the prejudices of the day (and surely this day as well).  An article in Vermont Digger of March 2012 suggested there was more than a whiff of anti-Semitism woven through the opposition.  All those New York people, you know.  To assuage those who were worried about despoiling the land, and to help sell the idea, a special national park-like designation was proposed for the area where the road was to end, just below the summit of Jay Peak (and where, ironically, today we have a dramatically altered Jay Peak anyway, only for a ski resort.)

In retrospect it is pleasant to think that the conservationists won, and in hindsight I suppose one could say they did. 

And there is still only a trail at the back of the field.