A hermit thrush, a white-throated sparrow, and a common yellow throat sang in the quiet air surrounding Sucker Pond - until Bert Atherton and his Komatsu PC 228 excavator rumbled back into view.
He placed another huge boulder along the edge of a boating access path and turned around to get yet more from the nearby woods. And more. And more. Days later, he'd strategically placed dozens of native boulders along the edges of the newly defined access and day use areas at the pond.
Meanwhile, 18 students in Dave Dence's and Dwayne Metcalf's forestry and heavy equipment program at the Career Development Center arrived at the pond. The president (Mike Lynch) and vice-president (Mark Atherton) of the Bennington Trail Conservancy (the BTC is an ATV club), each took a day off from work to join the team on the mountain.
Everyone was there to kick butt, shoreline restoration-wise. And from June 2 through June 4, that's what we did.
Sucker Pond was once the source of Bennington's drinking water. Now it's the area's recreational jewel in the woods. The 51-acre, nearly circular pond sits in a bowl surrounded by forested hills. It is a wild and lovely place. Except on party nights.
When the work crews arrived, we found fire pits full of cans and bottles. Lawn chair frames, oven racks, wheels, tires and other garbage littered the site. A Subaru wagon rusted in the woods.
And decades of party nights had left a large piece of shoreline denuded of vegetation and rutted with four-wheeler and ATV tracks. Without protective vegetation, such exposed soils washed into the pond in every large rain event. Sedimentation is a big issue for Vermont lakes and ponds. Over time, sediment can promote algae blooms, alter native aquatic plants and animals communities, and impair fisheries.
The forestry and heavy equipment program students knew about Sucker Pond's fishery. (The 20th anniversary unofficial bass tournament is to be held there on June 13, which is also free fishing day in Vermont.) And so along with shovels and rock bars, pickaxes and landscaping rakes, some of them brought fishing rods.
They also brought food - more than three sandwiches per student per day. It takes a lot of calories to clear debris, carry rock, and transplant native trees and shrub for hours on end, two days running. (The eroded areas were regraded and planted with balled-and-burlapped specimens dug from the forest.) It requires fewer calories to fish from the shore at lunchtime.
Those familiar with Sucker Pond will be struck with the improvements made there. A kind of boulder-edged driveway makes it possible to drive to near the pond's edge to drop off a boat. The formerly eroded area between the road and the water has been planted. A large open space, the site of the former caretaker's cabin, has been cleaned up for parking and tenting. And a large and attractive fire pit has been built in a grassy day use area with great views of the water. And the Subaru? Outta there.
The team hopes to install signs and maintain the plantings, and the Bennington Trail Conservancy has scheduled a clean-up for the trails leading to the site. In the end, though, everyone who uses Sucker Pond needs to avoid actions that might impair its water quality. Keep vehicles away from the shoreline. Don't cut trees in the buffer zone. And respect our young people's efforts to make a difference in their local community. John, Jason, Dalton, Trevor, Ben, Dustin, Brad, Brandon, Alan, Brad, Eric, Eric, Joe, Loren, Garth, JJ, Tayler, and Austin will be grateful to you.
Shelly Stiles is the district manager of the Bennington County Conservation District. The Sucker Pond project was planned and implemented by the District, the Bennington Trail Conservancy, Burgess Bros., the forestry and heavy equipment program at the Career Development Center, Green Mountain National Forest, and Vermont DEC. Funding was provided by the Forest and the Vermont Clean and Clear program.
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in June 2009, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.