Today’s Vermont: A Vision for 2020
You might roll your eyes when you read this, but snow shoveling is my favorite winter chore.
That’s because thriving in Vermont for six months of the year requires bundling up and getting outside in all sorts of inclement weather. Snow shoveling gives me a chance to fill my lungs with cold, clear air, exercise until my cheeks are pink, and notice the subtle forms of winter beauty, like the purple glow of mountains or the texture of falling snow.
I usually queue up a podcast before snow shoveling, tucking my phone into the chest pocket of my jacket and listening to Vermont Edition, Brave Little State, Embracing Apocalypse, or Rumble Strip as I set to the meditative work of clearing paths. Even if I don’t make it beyond the dooryard of my house here in Richmond village, by the time I’m ready to return fireside I’ve gotten a healthy dose of winter exercise for the day.
This winter, though, I have a problem, and I need to make an embarrassing confession:
I have a tiny snow shovel. It’s a little blue plastic number just one size up from the sort of shovel a child might use to build a sandcastle at the beach. I left my large, sturdy shovel behind in Craftsbury when we moved to Richmond this year, and much as I enjoy shoveling snow, I really miss the efficiency and heft of my trusty Northeast Kingdom tool. Snow shoveling may be an enjoyable chore, but it shouldn’t take more than one Vermont Edition to finish the job.
Across the street, my new neighbors happen to own an enormous snow shovel. The thing is practically a human-powered snowplow. While I’m shoveling snow in tens of thousands of teeny-tiny loads, they can clear their driveway in a few cheerfully efficient sweeps. Sure, I love snow shoveling, but can you imagine the shovel envy that might fester between us in swirling blizzards over the course of a long winter?
Happily, though, there’s a very Vermont solution at hand. I use my neighbor’s snow shovel.
I also use their shop-vac, ladder, electric drill, air purifier, and stud finder. Heck, I probably use other things that I’ve forgotten about. (Neighbors, if you’re reading, come over and get whatever you’re missing.)
The bottom line is that my family and I are blessed with kind and generous neighbors, and we reciprocate their generosity whenever we can. Whether it’s sharing tools, helping out with childcare, or providing a cozy couch in a warm living room on days that are hard or cold, we all benefit from sharing resources in a spirit of kindness, trust, and cooperation.
Yesterday I watched online as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders to a crowd of 20,000 gathered on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. I welled up a little seeing Bernie fired up in that golden California light - an old man who cut his teeth on Stannard Mountain, still fighting for people who have few and precious resources of their own.
In her introduction, AOC made a passionate argument for civic engagement, for realignment of national priorities, and for using our riches and resources to establish an advanced society. “A loving society is an advanced society,” she said. “We all have something to give.”
Knowing that we all have something to give - and giving of ourselves in a spirit of love - is a cultural touchstone of Vermont. Like Bernie and like AOC, I believe that many of the challenges we face can be solved if we choose to work together and act with love.
For example, let’s consider home-sharing, a practice that depends on opening one’s home to a stranger. Home-sharing relies on cooperation and inclusion. It doesn’t increase GDP or generate returns for Real Estate Investment Trusts, but that’s kind of the point. Many home-sharing situations come about informally and organically, but here in Vermont we’re also lucky to have the top-notch organization Home Share Now, which provides introductions, guidance, and expertise honed over 37 years of facilitating home shares in Northwestern and Central Vermont.
Are you concerned about the climate crisis?
For many people, home-sharing is THE most effective way to reduce carbon emissions and build climate resilience, because people who might otherwise require two homes - and two furnaces - now live under one roof.
Maybe you’ve been following the excellent Worse For Care reporting by Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio, and are worried about the state of the burgeoning eldercare industry in Vermont?
Home Sharing is often an effective way for elders to live safely and comfortably in their own homes, with companionship and “just in case” help on hand if needed.
Or maybe affordable housing is top on your list of concerns for Vermont, especially when we need more young people to set roots and foster vibrant prosperity in our villages and towns.
Well, home-sharing provides folks of all ages with affordable housing options in neighborhoods that might otherwise be beyond their housing budget, reducing the need for working Vermonters to take on expensive and polluting car commutes that spew carbon and reliably suck savings accounts dry.
A recent Home Share Now listing in Montpelier caught my eye - share a home w/ a professional in her 70s who enjoys gardening & travel. $550/mo...plus light snow shoveling.
I wonder if the house in Montpelier comes with a nice, big snow shovel.
When contemplating how to tap into traditional systems of generosity in Vermont, it’s important to consider how we might extend the circle of neighbors to help visitors and new Vermonters feel welcome. This can be something as large as the (awesome) Stay to Stay Weekends sponsored by the Vermont Department of Economic Development, or as small as giving new neighbors the skinny on how to procure free buckets of sand and gravel at the Town Garage.
(Side note: When it comes to winter maintenance of driveways and dooryards in Vermont, I fervently believe that thorough sanding is even more important than shoveling. Don’t @ me.)
Transportation is another area where sharing resources makes sense, especially because cars are currently the source of almost half of Vermont’s carbon emissions. I’m skeptical of expensive projects that aim to make marginal efficiency improvements within a car-centric transportation paradigm, but enthusiastic about low-cost solutions that leverage existing resources and depend on little more than trust and cooperation. The Hitching Post is one such arrangement, a grassroots ride-sharing program dreamed up by my friend Adam “Phoenix” Mitchell.
The first Hitching Posts linked Worcester and Montpelier, but with a little bit of elbow grease and cultural oomph, they have the potential to spread statewide in 2020. Establishing a Hitching Post involves a lot of community collaboration and communication, but almost no infrastructure besides a wooden post in a convenient location on the side of a roadway. I’m hopeful that a Hitching Post will soon be planted here in downtown Richmond so that I don’t get smushed while trying to ride my bike down Route 2 to reach the bus stop at the Park & Ride.
Forest stewardship is another longstanding tradition in Vermont, and even private forests are traditionally treated as a community resource. As with home sharing and hitching rides, it turns out that uplifting and updating this tradition for today’s Vermont has the potential to ward off the worst of the climate crisis. Plus, unlike climate strategies that emphasize austerity, or might be perceived as top-down and out of touch, approaches that built on existing cultural scaffolding might well appeal to Vermonters in rural communities who have yet to share in economic prosperity.
The Vermont tradition of forest stewardship is important because trees are the most effective tools we have to sequester and render harmless the carbon emissions that are causing climate change. As journalist Kevin McCallum recently reported in a piece titled Carbon Cents, Vermonters are researching the nascent market for forest carbon offsets, which, if thoughtfully designed, might provide monetary resources that help preserve and protect our legacy of forested lands. Of course as we consider forest carbon offsets it’s important to note that forests hold inherent value that is completely separate from the arcane economic system we 21st-century humans have devised, but if that value can be translated into dollars in a way that honors the relationships of care between Vermonters and our forested lands, so much the better.
I would hope that forests managed for carbon offsets would also be places where Vermonters could hunt and fish, walk dogs and ride bikes, tap maple trees, harvest wild edibles, and practice low-impact logging, too. Again, effective innovation depends on culturally and ecologically appropriate implementation, and few Vermont traditions are as cherished as shared access to forest land.
Even forests that can’t be developed and don’t have much “value” in the current marketplace for forest products are terrific carbon sinks. I wouldn’t be surprised if cedar swamps, logged over parcels, and sloping, ledgy forestlands all increase in value as attention turns to the urgency of mitigating climate change, and policymakers look for market solutions. Ready or not, the conversation around managing Vermont forests for carbon sequestration will get very serious in the coming years.
A couple of forest parcels that are up for sale include this 322-acre parcel on Marsh Road in Wolcott, crisscrossed by brooks and adjacent to East Hill Wildlife Management area, listed for $299,900. Or 173 acres in Bennington for $150,000.
Personally, I prefer living in a village center rather than out in the woods, but I understand the appeal of finding refuge in the solitude of the Vermont countryside. If you’re looking for peace and quiet in Vermont, consider the importance of the land that surrounds your home. Recognize the inherent value it holds, not just for you, but for the whole community, local and global. After all, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said as she stood with Bernie in that California sunshine: “We belong to the Earth, not the other way around.”
Would you consider sharing your home with a stranger? How about sharing your car? What would you say to AOC and Bernie if you ran into them over brunch at Penny Cluse? Did you know that there’s usually free gravel available at Town Garages throughout Vermont? Do you have any other Vermonty tips to share? Join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #todaysvermont, and thanks, as always, for reading.
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