I always know I’m coming home when I see Glastenbury Mountain against the sky. Bennington is my port of entry from the west, and the looming bulk of Glastenbury tells me I am back in the Green Mountains.
But that’s just one reason I’m glad the Vermont Wilderness Association has proposed about 40,000 acres of federal land on and around Glastenbury Mountain for designation by Congress as permanent wilderness.
If established by Congress, Glastenbury Mountain Wilderness would be another of the many qualities making Bennington County in Vermont’s southwest corner an attractive place to live or visit. The proposed wilderness is unique. Stretching from Kelley Stand Road in the north nearly to Route 9 in the south, it is the only place where Vermont’s Long Trail extends 20 miles without crossing a road. It is one of very few inky black spots on satellite photos of the Northeast at night. The fire tower on Glastenbury, which would be kept under the wilderness proposal, is 10 miles from a road in each direction by the Long Trail. Its 360-degree view of forested mountains provides an unusual sense of remoteness.
For the wanderer afoot, the Glastenbury Mountain area is a treasure. The Long Trail, the West Ridge Trail and the Bald Mountain Trail cross it. Old logging roads, closed to the sound and speed of motors, could become an extraordinary resource of handicapped-accessible trails into a region recovering its primeval character. For the adventurous off-trail traveler, remote beaver ponds and other spots let the rambler flirt with getting lost. Some former logging roads might become horse trails, subject
to Forest Service planning and approval.
All of the land on and around Glastenbury has been logged, some of it logged heavily and comparatively recently. But as centuries pass, it will return to ancient forest, much like the one that was here 300 years ago.
In fact, the value of Glastenbury Mountain and other potential federal wilderness areas in Vermont is more in what they can become than in what they are today. New York’s Adirondack Park, now world-famous, was largely
a wasteland of stumps, slash and slides when New York amended its constitution in the late 1800s to keep state-owned land “forever wild," despite vociferous objections.
New York’s goal was principally to protect water supplies for the state canal system. But the wisdom of the decision on other grounds has become more evident and accepted with every passing decade. Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks were just as controversial upon their creation, but virtually no one today argues that it was a mistake to keep them intact for future generations.
Forestry today is far ahead of the practices that devastated the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We have learned a lot. But we need to learn more. We need large, wild and unmanaged forests for comparison, to learn what long-term effects we have on soils, specialized fungi and the like. New England’s trees can live 400 years or more. Anyone who claims that a century of scientific forestry has discovered everything there is to know is like the urban escapee who proclaims himself a seasoned farmer three weeks after planting his first crop of corn.
When first settled by Europeans, Vermont was about 85 percent old-growth forest. The rest consisted of waterways and openings made by beavers, hurricanes and other disturbances. By all accounts, settlers were astounded by the abundance of wildlife.
Now, old-growth forest occupies a tiny fraction of one percent of the state. If Glastenbury Mountain and the other areas proposed by the Vermont Wilderness Association are designated wilderness by Congress, a little over two percent of the state will eventually harbor ancient forest refuges for wildlife and people to enjoy. Just as the small islands of alpine tundra on our highest mountains add to the overall diversity of our natural world, so will significant islands of naturally evolving forest.
With public support and far-sighted leadership from our political representatives, Glastenbury Mountain Wilderness will be among those special places that, in the years to come, will function as a sanctuary of reassurance and hope. Reassurance, that nature has the power to recover from deep wounds if we will give it a chance, and hope that the world of the future will harbor islands of wildness, of untamed beauty, and of questions yet waiting to be answered.
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