So many letters have come to us lately about our swimming hole protection efforts. Many people have written about how they began swimming in their favorite area as a child. Others have told of grandparents bringing them to the water and of now bringing their own grand-children.

The lessons children bring home from a Vermont swimming hole are different than those they learn at a private or municipal pool. They are lessons that carry long into life, lessons about clean water and wild places, lessons about connection to specific locales, lessons that find their way into a place deep in the body.

Even in adulthood, the feel of swimming hole water is unique. The experience is nothing less than exhilarating: to swim in water that has been smoothing the rock since (perhaps even before) the glaciers gouged the soil off the northern land...to swim where trout swim.

But what if things were to change? What if the water in the Vermont swimming hole you had enjoyed as a child became too dirty to enjoy; what if homes were built right up to the water's edge upstream of the hole? It might not matter that this property was protected if the water itself was not.

There is a great interdependence between protecting land access to swimming holes and protecting the land use and behaviors that keep natural swimming waters clean.

Although most Vermont communities are many strokes ahead of places (throughout the country) that have lost their natural waters (with little hope of restoration), we are in danger of losing our connection with rivers even here.

The VRC is helping to maintain people's connection to natural waters and special water places by protecting exceptional properties such as Buttermilk Falls, Twenty-Foot Hole, and the Lower Clarendon Gorge. But what if land use changes drastically around these places? What if there is no commitment on the part of nearby private landowners or municipalities to keep the waters clean? What if the users of the property decide to trash it? All of these places could be closed to swimming and public use. Something unfathomable would be lost.

Rivers and streams are the great connectors of our world. They grow from their headwaters and travel to the sea, crossing political and land use boundaries. They connect mountains with valleys, towns with cities. They connect people. Unfortunately, as we pollute our rivers, the healthy lives clean waters encourage will disintegrate and disappear. The State of Vermont already has a long list of impaired waters. It is not merely the responsibility of the State to clean these waters up. It is the responsibility of all: private landowners, businesses, people who use the water for anything-fishing, swimming, drinking, splashing, watering the garden. It is as much the responsibility of sixth generation Vermonters as it is the responsibility of newcomers to the State.

It is our responsibility to educate each other in our work caring for the land and the
water. In the effort to protect Vermont's rivers, towns can learn from other towns. Private landowners can learn ways they might improve their private management of land to better protect a critical public resource.

Remember the lessons you learned at the swimming hole - share your connection with those who might be beginning to forget.

Learn how you can help the VRC

Page updated 2/26/08 by Zephyr Sites