Meet Lauren and Ben

On Hope, Intention and Place

Intention For One's Place in the Landscape

Lauren and her partner Ben are new to the land that they own and tend at the end of a class four road in Newbury, Vermont. Their's is a story centered in the excitement of possibility that comes with learning about a new piece of land and of taking one's time to get to know a space through being within it. Ben spoke of the importance of maintaining contiguous forest for migrating birds and how this realization was really driven home to him while sleeping in the tent on his property over the summer

...living in a tent all summer, we just heard, heard all of them and started paying attention and identifying them. And I was aware, as the summer progressed into fall, of all the change occuring…being aware of the migratory animals that come through here, so we’re trying to preserve a diversity of habitats for all those species of birds.

It is clear that their place within the landscape is something that they’ve put an incredible amount of consideration into.

Beaver Habitat Restoration Project

One of the first projects that Lauren and Ben did on their property was a passion project to restore beaver habitat to a portion of the land. With Lauren’s educational background in river science, she brings an understanding of the importance of beavers to riparian ecosystems. One of the management practices that they’ve incorporated to promote beaver habitat is to thin trees in order to encourage the growth of other trees that the beavers prefer to eat. They were delighted when, a couple days before closing up their camp for the summer, they spotted two beavers in the formerly abandoned space!

Hope

It is easy to question whether the work that one does individually is ever at the scale to make appreciable change. Lauren and Ben spoke about how to continue doing the work and remaining hopeful in the face of climate change. Something that gives them hope is being within a piece of contiguous forestland with neighbors who also value conservation and also viewing human interaction with a landscape on the much vaster timeline that the forest operates on.

But we just do what we can and what we feel empowered to do. And maybe this is just enough room for one more pair of bobcats or family of beavers or family of moose or something that’s protected here. It’s a drop in the bucket, but if everybody just did a little bit, then those drops would add up.