A Human Presence
In The Landscape

I have followed your articles on the Green Mountain National Forest wilderness proposals and the letters to the editor in response with great interest. I would like to address two points in the discussion.

(1) As a local second home-owner, I am part of a constituency that the Wilderness Association is claiming as being in favor of enlarging wilderness areas. In fact, when we looked for a place to build, we wanted to live in a working landscape. A landscape with human presence and partnership with the natural world was essential to us, and the traditional communities and settlement patterns that we treasure here are based on farming and forestry.

Had we wanted wilderness, we would have sought property in Maine or northern New Hampshire. Not everybody wants to or is capable of tramping into wilderness areas—we look to the woods and fields of our neighborhood for our outdoor pleasures.

The economic contributions of logging or farming in the Vermont economy may be limited, but their contribution to the soul of this place is enormous.

(2) The withdrawal of GMNF land from active logging would not mean that logging will not happen. As Dr. David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, points out in the Vermont Land Trust annual report, the U.S. imports vast quantities of wood from the rest of the world, and much of that comes from tropical forests far less resilient than ours.

Hardwoods for furniture making can come from our forests; if they do not, tropical landscapes will be logged. That land may never be able to return to forest. In addition to curbing our appetites, facing our environmental responsibilities means addressing our resource needs locally and sustainability. It seems far more likely that this could happen in the Green Mountain National Forest than in Sumatra or Brazil.

The rich, complex human landscape of Vermont presents an alternative to the suburbia/ wilderness dichotomy that dominates current American ideas about landscape. If I were to propose a national park here, it would be on the British model of traditional communities and land use patterns, not trying to create "pristine" wilderness.

The creation and nurturing of a sustainable working landscape and local communities should be at the core of all decisions on land use in Vermont, and I hope that those making the decisions on land use in the Green Mountain National Forest will make this the central consideration.

Sincerely, Richard Smith

East Randolph and

Swampscott, Mass.