On the evening of July 5, I attended a Norwich Trails Committee meeting for the first time. Upon arrival, I took a seat at a table surrounded by stoic faces. The room was filled with the palpable sense of anxiety that comes from being uncertain about the future in the face of shared adversity.
After the flooding resulting from the torrential rains of July 1, this was understandable. Roads of every stripe had been devastated, people had been stranded by washouts and the condition of the area’s trail systems was in question.
One by one, the members of the committee reported on the areas they had been able to survey since the storm, and it was established that many of the area’s most popular trails had fared remarkably well. The Ballard Trail, however, had sustained the worst damage.
As a swollen stream had careened around a corner adjacent to a narrow section of trail carved into the sloping bank, the bank had given way and an 80-foot-long section had fallen into the water. Immediately before the meeting, I had gone out for my usual run on the trail and passed the makeshift cardboard sign declaring “use at own risk” without much thought, not knowing the extent of the damage I was about to find.
I had been astounded upon reaching the location of the washout, as the trail simply ended at a sheer dropoff of about 8 feet with the water racing below. Looking across the gap, it was several moments before I was able to locate the spot where the fractured end of the trail emerged again on the far side of the washout.
My mind began to immediately race, considering prospects for what could be done to restore the trail. The stream had carved itself a new course and now flowed directly through the spot where the bank had once supported the trail.
Attempting to rebuild the bank and reconstruct the trail in its old location would be material-intensive and time-consuming at best, and would not be a sustainable solution for future storms of similar magnitude. Crossing over to the other side of the stream and back probably wouldn’t be workable, either — the other bank is much lower, and it’s a wide span that could only be bridged by a very serious construction project.
At first glance, it looked to me like the only feasible option would be rerouting the trail further up the bank above the washout. However, the bank is steep with dense vegetation, far from an optimal location for a trail. Rerouting over such terrain would be a significant undertaking, requiring a departure of the trail from the existing route and rejoining it well past.
What amazed me was the attitude with which the members of the trails committee met this news. There was no negativity, no complaints, no bemoaning our bad luck.
There was no arguing about the plan and no blame placed. Instead, the question of the moment was how soon a group of people could coordinate a time to get together and go out after work one day to assess the damage and develop a plan for addressing it.
The next order of business was scheduling a weekend work day to begin implementing the plan and discussing how the word would be spread to likely volunteers. Concerned as I was, it was immeasurably reassuring to be reminded that our community is so full of capable and committed people. As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
In my mind, this reaction embodies the best to which our community can aspire to in difficult moments. A fundamental pearl of wisdom is that in moments when we feel powerless in the face of external circumstances beyond our control, our only sensible course of action is to reframe the issue and regain our equilibrium by mindfully choosing how we respond.
Nobody wanted the flood damage of July 1 to come to our region, but the fact that it did is out of our control. Faced with this challenge, we can wallow and waste our time wishing to change the past, or we can start making things better by putting on our boots and gloves and getting to work.
In the wake of the flood, the can-do attitude I witnessed at the trails committee meeting has been abundantly present in every corner of our community. From the road crews who worked around the clock to make the roads passable again to the neighbors coordinating cleanup of storm debris and the countless people working selflessly to ensure that our limited resources got to where they were most needed, it’s clear that the citizens of the Upper Valley are bound together by something stronger than mere accidents of geography.
We see each other through difficult moments by drawing on the strength of our community, and the sense of connection remains powerful as the recovery from the effects of the storm continues more than a month later. It is this spirit that makes me proud to call this place home.