South Royalton
But despite the positive atmosphere, the memories of Irene, which upended many residents’ lives, remained fresh.
“Since Irene I’ve focused pretty much completely on community resilience,” said Peg Elmer Hough, whose house was ravaged during the storm, “so that’s my means of dealing with PTSD, I think.”
In an office across from the green, South Royalton resident Susan Cain narrated a slideshow of photos taken in the aftermath of the storm.
A photo of a submerged meadow appeared on the screen: “There’s my field, water coming in both ends,” she said. Another, of a hut dangling over a washed-out ridge: “That’s my chicken house. We tethered it so it wouldn’t float down the river.”
Cain said the storm and resulting flood deposited so much sand and silt on her land that “over 100 big dump trucks” were required to haul it away. Cain said she still felt traumatized by Irene.
“It was really hard,” she said. “I hope today helps get rid of some of this.”
Yet she feels lucky not to have lost more. So does John Dumville, whose home in Royalton village, unlike some at lower elevations, was spared in the flood.
“It was amazing the people who came together to help,” said Dumville, who was the director of Vermont’s historic sites program at the time.
At the President Calvin Coolidge State Historical Site in Plymouth, he said, the Wilder House Restaurant joined townspeople in contributing food to help everyone weather the storm. He was relieved that his organization suffered only “capital damage, not people damage.”
Hough, the festival’s chief planner, was teaching on a three-year grant at Vermont Law School when Irene hit. Now that that gig is up, she has moved away and put her renovated house up for sale. She hopes the event becomes a regular one, though.
“It’s good to have bigger culverts and stronger bridges,” she said, “but the connections between people are what really matter.”
The Windsor County Community Emergency Response teams were among the organizations with an informational booth at the festival.
“We’re not really first responders, but we’re there to help first responders,” said John van Wetering, of Ludlow, who directs the Southern Windsor County CERT.
For two weeks after Irene, Van Wetering assisted the National Guard in providing relief to affected areas.
“You didn’t know whether you’d be in Cavendish or Weathersfield — wherever we were needed,” he said.
Now, he and his colleagues are recruiting new members so towns in the area will be better equipped to handle future storms.
Royalton resident Geo Honingford also took it upon himself to aid in the recovery effort post-Irene. Upon realizing that his farm, Hurricane Flats, was hopelessly flooded, he decided to make himself useful by helping organize the many volunteers who had come out.
“Someone asked at some point, ‘How did you get the vest? Who put you in control?’ The truth is, we did,” he said.
To thank his neighbors for helping his family recover from Irene, Honingford spent yesterday’s festival eagerly giving away grilled corn on the cob from his farm.
Just a mile south on Windsor Street, a road-side sign showing Irene’s high water mark towers above the same fields that produce the fresh ears, a reminder both of the flood’s severity and of the community’s collective effort to recover.