I realized this morning, as I plotted out my route, that a theme has been developing as a subtext to my journal entries: I went West the first week and encountered trees within 100 paces of my door; I ventured South a week later and was soon shrouded in a dense stand of conifers. With two essays and two cardinal directions ahead of me, I declared it my mission to scatter myself to the four corners of Middlebury in search of unexplored territory. This morning, with my divine purpose fixed, I set out to the North.
But my quest today was in vain. As I travelled along Weybridge Street, town gave way to suburb, suburb to farm fields, and on and on as far as the eye could see. I’ve travelled that road enough by car to know that, were I to carry on, I’d cross more fields, a train track, a major state thoroughfare, and arrive eventually in the unwieldy sprawl of Burlington. I climbed two hills past the Weybridge town line, clutching to forlorn hope, but I soon despaired of encountering any forest— surely this is not the “proverbial peace and quiet,” that tantalizing rustic lifestyle of the Green Mountain State? I pass lonely islands of trees along the roadside. My journey becomes little more than an exercise in tree identification— there’s a solitary shagbark hickory; and there, a stand of cherries; a neat row of planted beeches; three ancient oaks. But this is no forest: the lush Greens impend, an ungraspable, hazy phantom on the horizon of a tattered natural landscape, while the omnipresent must of cattle dung and the buzz of transformers overhead are poignant reminders of how profoundly unwild this place is.
Our Commons here has been grazed. The literature tells us that we’ve doubled the number of houses in recent decades and that practically every inch of viable land is occupied. Lake Dunmore, not too long ago a wilderness paradise, is girded by a near-complete ring of developed land. Where can we go next? The frontier is closed! We worry about habitat for endangered species— we wring our hands about global warming— but what of our own habitat? We have been sumptuous in our overuse. In squeezing more and more people into our tiny Northern Kingdom, we’re squeezing out the lifeblood of the state. One can’t help but wonder, considering the suppression the National Parks have suffered this week, how our scant resources can possibly hold up. What’s clear, though, is that we must conserve, and we must use conservatively.
Eventually, I retraced my steps toward the TAM, not wanting to waste a whole morning without ever entering a forest. The Class of ’97 Trail took me through a marvelous, but tiny, pine and hemlock grove. The tenacious needles cast a pleasant, refreshing verdure over the trail, which is otherwise whelmed in grey. I re-encountered an old friend, musclewood (Carpinus carolinia), one of my favorite species and one I haven’t seen in ages. I also remarked one tree that had apparently succumbed to pileated woodpecker damage, along with numerous deadfalls, evidence of a ‘microburst,’ which must have hit this stand a few seasons ago.
In a bizarre inversion of history, my “Pioneer West” lies to the East. Across town in the State Forest we caught a glimpse of pure, apparently unadulterated forest, wherein one might escape the cars, cables, and concrete. But for that, I must wait for another day. For now, I wend my way around the farm fields, passing from the glaring desolation of the fractured woodlands back to the manicured greenery of campus.
–Angus Warren