The springs at the Bradford-Putnam Wetlands off Burgess Road flow all winter long. (No "water like a stone,'' to use the words of the carol, there.) They bubble up in what were once concrete cisterns, part of the former Putnam Water Works, and are now natural pools. There's not much sound in the air there now, but at the summer solstice, at the other end of the year, spring peepers and other amphibians will vocalize cacophonously. It's good to have the light to look forward to.
I visited a farmer recently. In the valley bottom, the stems along the creeks were covered in hoar frost. The side hill fields and pastures were blanketed in white. But when I turned into the farm's snow-drifted driveway and trudged toward the house, I found snow spattered with blood.
By the barn, from what looked like a hydraulic lift (I averted my eyes quickly), hung a huge skinned beef carcass (or was it two half-carcasses?), destined to feed folks who will appreciate the food, maybe even need it. But come the summer solstice, at a time of new life, that barn and those fields will instead shelter and feed a number of beef calves. They'll probably even gambol. It's good to have the light to look forward to.
But there's "light" the astronomical and ecological fact, and there's "light" the metaphor. Despite the dark time of year, the economic crisis building around us, the wars that won't end and the wars that seem to be building, some light still shines on the natural world and working landscapes of Bennington County.
Around the state, people are beginning to appreciate the potential of so-called low-grade wood resources as sources of energy. Already in our county, the Mount Anthony middle and high schools and Bennington College produce heat with wood chips.
For several months now, a group of us have been meeting regularly at Whitman's Feed Store, to discuss how to grow production and use of these underutilized sources of energy - and with them grow wood-related jobs and forest landowner income.
Some in the group have begun to get down to specifics. They're locating the equipment they'll need to process the logs. They've begun to contact loggers and landowners to gauge their interest in expanding their harvests. If you have an interest in joining this discussion, please be in touch.
On the fish front, population surveys in the Batten Kill indicate some increase in young-of-the-year brown trout. It's too early to correlate these numbers with habitat restoration efforts going back years on the river. Still, higher numbers are better numbers, and offer encouragement to all the many partners involved in these efforts. Projects for the 2009 field season on the Kill are in the design phase now.
In Bennington, a proposal has been submitted for federal funding to address flood hazards on the Roaring Branch. BCCD board member and Bennington County Regional Commission staffer Lissa Stark took the lead in writing the grant proposal, to which many partners contributed.
BCCD has already secured funding to work with DEC, the Green Mountain National Forest, the Bennington Trail Conservancy and others to restore an eroded shoreline on Sucker Pond. Help from other ORV users would be welcome.
And the couple of below-zero nights we've already had this season will make it harder for a group of recently trained hemlock wooly adelgid surveyors to find their destructive search object, which has not yet been found in Bennington County. (Temperatures of minus-5 degrees and lower kill most hemlock wooly adelgid young.)
That's both a cold and warm thought. Just as this is both a time of shadow and illumination - a time for some melancholy but also a time when there is much to be grateful for. Among those things: the lengthening light. Because it's good to have more light to look forward to.
Shelly Stiles is the manager of the Bennington County Conservation District, whose mission is promoting rural livelihoods and protecting natural resources in Southwestern Vermont.
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in December 2008, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.