Burlington Free Press article about HNA

The Burlington Free Press
HAZEN’S NOTCH ASSOCIATION PASSES ON LOVE OF THE LAND
HAZEN’S NOTCH
Rolf and Sharon Anderson devote their land
and their lives to helping children and adults
explore the natural world of Hazen’s Notch
By Candace Page
Free Press Staff Writer
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MONTGOMERY CENTER —
Trail crew volunteers had sawed and
lopped their way through a forest of
brush when leader Sharon Anderson
stopped on a hilltop, pulled out a soft
brown animal pelt and called, “I have
an ecology quiz - can anyone identify
this animal?”
Already the crew had interrupted its
work to look at an uncommon woodland
plant (Braun’s holly fern), and to discuss
what sort of bird likely left a big splotch
of droppings on the trail (a Cooper’s
hawk, one person guessed).
At the Hazen’s Notch Association,
even the hard labor of trail maintenance
comes with lessons in natural history.
In a cleft of the northern Green
Mountains, Anderson and her husband,
Rolf, have married a cross country ski
area to a year-round environmental
education program and to their belief in
careful stewardship of the land.
The result is a small nonprofit
organization - annual budget, about
$50,000 - with a growing role in the
lightly populated eastern reaches of
Franklin County.
While the association has a membership of 400, its goals are an extension of
the Andersons’ personal vision of a
place where children and adults can gain
a deeper appreciation of the natural
world and humans’ role as stewards.
The two, successful mountain guides
and outdoor gear entrepreneurs, closed
their businesses in the 1990’s to found
the Hazen’s Notch Association on 100
acres of land outside Montgomery
Center.
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“We’re trying to create something
that will outlive us,” Rolf Anderson said.
Each summer, more than 150 children attend the Hazen’s Notch Association’s summer nature camps. Thousands
of schoolchildren have visited the
group’s 500-acre property during the
school year, to learn about animals and
plants, and to try cross-country skiing
and snowshoeing.
Like nearby Jay Peak, Hazen’s
Notch is known for its reliable snowfall,
which draws Canadians and northern
Vermonters to the group’s 40 miles of
ski and snowshoe trails.
More than 30 landowners allow the
association to maintain trails on their
land. In recent years, the HNA has
begun to discuss the purchase or gift of
permanent conservation easements with
some property owners.
Last summer, the Hazen’s Notch
Association launched Montgomery
Community Gardens, partnering with
dairy farmer Mark Brouillette to create
plots for gardeners, and to help schoolchildren raise food they could eat when
school returned in the fall.
“It’s an extremely valuable
resource,” says Bett Howrigan, a fifthand sixth-grade teacher at Fairfield
School, whose students have taken part
in ecology and adventure programs at
the Hazen’s Notch Association. “We
live in a rural community, so they show
us what’s right there in our own backyard and how to use it.”
Hazen’s Notch Association
P.O. Box 478
Montgomery Center VT 05471
802.326.4799
Birth of a nature center
Rolf Anderson speaks with a measured
slowness, each sentence apparently
formed carefully in advance. His
approach to building the Hazen’s Notch
Association mirrored that deliberateness
of his speech.
By the late 1980’s, the Andersons
were seeking a change. For more than a
decade they had run their outdoors businesses. They led outdoor-loving clients
on weeklong trips in the Adirondacks
and the White Mountains. Year-round,
they ran a mail order company, Vermont
Voyageur Equipment, selling outdoor
clothing and gear to ski area workers,
mountaineering schools and the like.
But the guiding business was changing. Clients were more interested in
adventure destinations than exploring
nature. The Andersons - whose first
interest was teaching - did not want to
follow that path.
“We knew we had to reinvent ourselves,” Rolf Anderson said.
The couple decided to create an environmental education center to work with
children in northern Vermont. They
studied other nonprofits; Rolf joined the
Green Mountain Club board and became
its president.
They found an overgrown farm a developer was planning to subdivide into
small building lots. The land, renamed
the Bear Paw Pond Conservation Area,
became the children’s summer camp.
Later, they purchased 400 acres nearby
to add to their teaching landscape.
The association took over the Hazen’s
Notch cross-country ski area in 2000.
Other programs, including the community gardens and land trust work, followed.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
HAZEN’S NOTCH ASSOCIATION PASSES ON LOVE OF THE LAND
HAZEN’S NOTCH
Group devotes land,
time to sharing the natural world
Modeling stewardship
While the land is used by the
Hazen’s Notch Association, it is owned
by the Andersons, for a reason.
“We felt from the beginning we
could set an example for other landowners by making our property available to
the public,” Rolf Anderson said. They
also set out to create a model of stewardship, managing their forest to improve
wildlife habitat.
“I’d like to ask you not to cut any
evergreens,” he briefed a crew of six
volunteers on a chilly November Saturday. They were setting out to clear a
new route for snowshoe travelers
through open woods to an overlook at
the lower end of the notch.
“We don’t want to leave a lot of protruding branch stubs along the trail,” he
told the crew. Birds use dead branches
as perches. The thick lower branches of
evergreens allow songbirds to perch,
safe from raptors that prey on them.
“We want to leave the trail as natural
as possible,” he said.
Many of the association’s most loyal
volunteers are people like Melissa
Haberman, an art teacher in St. Albans,
who hurries to Montgomery after work
after work in the winter to ski the woods
and fields maintained by the group.
“It’s just so peaceful and beautiful,”
she said as she helped snip saplings
sprouting in the trail.
‘Hands-on, real life’
Single-family homes have sprouted
slowly in the lower reaches of Hazen’s
Notch but the steep hills and deep woods
still provide unbroken habitat for bear,
bobcat and fisher.
Children attending the association’s
programs have seen bear cubs scurry up
a trail, followed moose tracks through
the woods, watched a crayfish snip the
tail off a salamander.
“Something always seems to happen
that makes it a new experience for
them,” although many students are
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familiar with life in the country, said
Deborah Benjamin, the association’s
staff naturalist.
In the association’s programs, children explore the forest and its creatures,
use nature as an inspiration for art projects, plant gardens and learn about Native American customs.
Patrick Farmer of Montgomery was
one of the trail crew volunteers who
studied the animal pelt Sharon Anderson
passed around on that early November
Saturday. (The pelt was a mink, part of a
purchased collection she uses in natural
history teaching.)
Farmer and his wife Carol are regular users of the winter trails, but his volunteer work, he said, is more to support
the association’s programs for children.
“I think the biggest value of this
place are the education programs for
kids: It’s hands-on, it’s real life - no
textbooks,” he said.
Since the rising cost of school bus
transportation makes it difficult for some
schools to bring their students to fall and
winter programs in Hazen’s Notch, the
association sends its naturalists to them.
Rolf Anderson helped the Sheldon
School create a plan for educational use
of a 75-acre forest the school was given.
In Fairfield, the association worked with
school children to build a nature trail at
the Chester Arthur birthplace, one of the
town’s landmarks.
“It’s a wonderful place,” Howrigan,
the Fairfield teacher, said of the Hazen’s
Notch Association. “They have some
great educators who bring Vermont at its
best to life for the kids.”
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IF YOU GO
Trailheads for the Hazen’s Notch
Association’s hiking and cross-country
trails are 1.5 miles east of Montgomery
Center on Vermont 58, the Hazen’s
Notch Road. Vermont 58 is not plowed
through the notch during winter, so
access is from Montgomery Center.
The Hazen’s Notch Association offers:
◊ Hiking:
About 15 miles of hiking trails, open
from late spring until the start of rifle
season for deer. Destinations include
2,700-foor Burnt Mountain. Access
from the trailhead on Rossier Road, a
right turn off Vermont 58 after the association’s welcome center. No trail fee.
◊ Cross-Country Skiing:
40 miles of groomed and marked trails
through 2,500 acres of mixed maple,
birch and evergreen forests and across
gentle, open meadows. Daily trail fee,
collected at the group’s welcome center. Area opens as soon as there is sufficient snow cover after end of deer
hunting season.
◊ Snowshoeing:
Marked trails to the top of view points,
including Burnt Mountain and Sugar
Hill overlooking Montgomery Center.
The association leads full-moon snowshoe hikes every month during winter.
Trail fee.
TO LEARN MORE
The Hazen’s Notch Association maintains an extensive website with information about its trail system, education
programs, special events, conservation
work, and the flora and fauna of the
northern Green Mountains.
WEB: www.hazensnotch.org
EMAIL: [email protected]
Sunday, November 18, 2007