It was late in the day and had already been a long week, but I don't think that explained it. The list of pollutants for the Batten Kill and the Hoosic just wasn't clicking for me. Nor, particularly, with the others at that meeting of our local watershed council (we're helping DEC build a long-range plan for our rivers).
We'd been asked to prioritize a bunch of nasty items, but none of them, alone or together, carried much emotional weight. We all knew that even if every pollutant - every nutrient, pathogen, heavy metal, acid raindrop, habitat alteration, sediment particle, and thermal modification - went away, there would still be something missing.
It was the reason we kept coming to these meetings.
It was the vision we had for our waters.
It's our assignment for next time.
Josh Gorman, our Vermont watershed coordinator for this part of the state, knows how hard it is to write a vision statement (our assignment), so he gave us some help. His draft statement began: "The surface waters of Basin 1 (that's all the rivers that drain to the Hudson) are a vital part of the community's quality of life, economic well-being, and overall health." It ended: "Pro-active protection of the waters of Basin 1 will retain the economic base, quality of life, and character of these waters for generations to come."
Josh's draft got one of our members thinking. She recounted a line from a very old book on Arlington, in which the Batten Kill valley was described as "a place of extraordinary beauty and productivity." It was the river, said C., that made that valley; it is the river that continues to create and protect that beauty and that productivity.
And it's not just tangible things it makes - a tourism industry, agriculture - she said. It's deeper than that. And here I'm paraphrasing wildly: It's the history of that water bubbling up out of springs and splashing down mountainsides; it's the lives of farmers and shopkeepers and children then and now who changed and are changing the land; it's a spiritual sort of thing we feel for our rivers, she said.
D. agreed. It's a gathering of upstream and downstream, he said, of people's needs met over a long period of time and across a wide landscape. It's a story, he said, and in fact (he got this idea from someone else), the river is the narrator of our land.
Now, that's language to make a person want to knuckle down and do her homework. My vision statement could contain phrases like: "an economically vital working landscape and ecologically intact natural communities;" or "cold, cascading headwaters above, green-shaded pools below," or something succinct like "clean water, good lives."
Whatever comes out, it will be an attempt to communicate the awe and delight, the gratitude and intellectual challenge I've experienced on our rivers - on the Batten Kill, Little Mad Tom, Roaring Branch, Broad Brook, Jewett Brook, City Stream - and all the other extraordinarily beautiful and productive waters of our county.
If you'd like to contribute a phrase to the story, a thought to the plan, or a part of your good life to the basin planning process (we meet monthly now), contact Josh Gorman, DEC watershed coordinator, at 447-6501 or joshua.gorman@ state.vt.us.
Shelly Stiles is the district manager for the Bennington County Conservation District, whose mission is promoting rural livelihoods and protecting natural resources in southwestern Vermont. The Web site is at www.bccdvt.org,
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in November 2008, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.