Fairlee
Under a large white tent held to the ground by metal spikes capped with tennis balls, Orford resident Harry Pease sold bottles of maple syrup from behind a folding table, facing artist Rob Mullen, who was pointing to an acrylic painting he’d done of the time he was charged by a grizzly bear in Alaska.
At other tents, children practiced walking on wooden stilts; Jim Moeykens sold handmade wooden guitars and ukuleles; and women staffing a booth set up by the Friends of Fairlee Forest pointed to a video monitor that was looping footage of an area beaver dam that collapsed earlier this year, sending a rush of water into Lake Morey.
Each attraction required a moment of thought to place it into the overall theme of the day — the first-ever Fairlee Forest Festival, held on Saturday to celebrate the 101st year of local arboreal stewardship under the Vermont Municipal Forest Act of 1915.
Vermont forests provide a wide range of services beneath their spreading branches, and the diversity of offerings — products carved from trees, art inspired by the woods, syrup drawn from maples through spiles, initiatives to promote the forest by turning back invasive species or hiking woodland trails — showed that people don’t all look at trees in quite the same way.
“You get a fuller picture from a full set of perspectives,” said Mullen, whose 24-inch square painting of the grizzly, which he priced at $5,300, depicts the moment during a solo canoe trip through Alaska’s Brooks Range when he fired his rifle to scare off the charging bear.
Mullen uses the forest as the backdrop of long solo trips through the wilderness that he says are an important chance to review his life, and that of others.
“I think you get a unique vision of human society when you’re cut off from it,” he said.
For Pease, owner of Orford’s Brackett Brook Farm, his primary interest in the forest is how much sap will flow into the 500 metal sugaring pails he places on his Orford property this year. In 2011 and 2012, he had his worst years ever, about 30 gallons each. This year, which featured an early sap-producing thaw followed by a freeze and a second round of sap flow, made up for it, resulting in a best-ever haul of 59 gallons.
“It was almost like a second season,” said Pease, who wore a T-shirt that read “May the Forest Be With You.”
Pease, 63, said he’s seen an increase in public interest about preserving Vermont’s wooded spaces.
“People are more conscious these days about sustainability,” he said.
Lynne Fitzhugh, who coordinated a group of 22 volunteers to pull the event off, agreed.
“Forestry is a lot more about stewardship,” she said. “It used to be about logging. We’re having this event because it’s encouraging to think we in Vermont have these phenomenal forests. We’ve got it in spades here. Why not celebrate?”
Fitzhugh said she believed Fairlee’s event was the first of its kind in New England.
John Haney, who stood beside his Clydesdales while children climbed on the bars that made up their temporary corral, has yet another kind of relationship with the forest — in order to serve the increasing numbers of landowners looking for low-impact ways to harvest their trees, he opened Hopewell Farm, a horse-powered logging operation, in 2008 in Corinth.
Haney said he’s not against a well-run motorized logging operation, but many are drawn to the horses’ ability to take out a downed tree without causing damage to the existing stand of trees or the landscape.
While there is demand for his services, Haney said, the higher cost of his operation, combined with a weak softwood pulp market, has made it more difficult for him to turn a profit in recent years.
“It’s not an easy vocation anymore,” he said.
Fitzhugh said she hopes the idea of holding a forest festival, which continues today with a series of guided hikes, will catch on, both in future years in Fairlee and in other communities.
Sometimes, the impact of the forest on a person’s livelihood is obvious; other times, the signs can be more subtle.
Across Route 5, away from the bustle of activity, Christina Culver, a 37-year-old health care worker from Lebanon, sat on the hood of her car, which was parked alongside those of other festival-goers on the lawn.
Culver gazed at the restive green woodscape in front of her, eating an apple fritter while Niles, her 4-year-old son, cried his way through a time-out that resulted from a fight between him and his 6-year-old brother.
She had seen the listing for the event in the newspaper, she said, and brought the children along, eager to continue her efforts to expose them to nature-themed programming in a way that would nurture the environmental ethos she saw budding within them.
After a few minutes, she invited the sniffling towheaded boy onto the hood of her car. At first, he was disconsolate, staring at his feet and answering questions in a barely audible whisper, but after a moment, he cocked his head.
“I hear a grasshopper!” he said quietly. He scanned the area in front of him, not seeing the grasshopper, but noticed a few birds moving among the treetops.
“Is that a robin?” his mother asked. “See the red chests?”
Niles nodded, his eyes bright and searching. The anger of the fight with his brother and the humiliation of the time-out quickly dissolved as he absorbed himself in the greenness before him.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.