Last Friday, a dream more than 100 years old was realized when the Green Mountain Club officially opened the Long Trail’s newest link – a suspension bridge for hikers across the Winooski River.At 224 feet long, with towers 40 feet high it’s the largest structure on the long trail, and cost some $1.5 million. It’s impressive.
And even more impressive is the change it will make in the Long Trail, the 272-mile “footpath in the wilderness” created and maintained by the Green Mountain Club. Instead of walking three and one half miles down a dusty back road to cross the river in Jonesville, hikers will descend from Camel’s Hump to walk across the gently swaying steel-cabled footbridge with the Winooski flowing placidly far beneath them.
Not only will the bridge make the crossing of the river easier and much more pleasant, it also strengthens the integrity of the Long Trail, and truly fulfills the vision of James Taylor, hiker and promoter, who in 1910 first envisioned the trail linking all the peaks of the Green Mountains.
Still another trail was celebrated just the week before the Green Mountain Club bridge was opened, and this trail too, is historic, but it happens to be on water – the Missisquoi River. A large group of Franklin and Orleans County residents gathered to applaud the designation of the upper Missisquoi and its tributary, the Trout, as Vermont’s first two nationally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers.
This federal designation will bring significant amounts of annual conservation funding, and will give the rivers national notice as outstanding recreational resources. Leaders of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a linked system of historic waterways stretching from New York to Maine, were on hand because the Missisquoi is a major part of that trail.
Local citizens worked for more than eight years to win the designation, which, like the Long Trail bridge, was the culmination of a longtime dream.
Mountains and rivers are among our most precious natural resources. Both the new bridge over the Winooski and the designation of the Missisquoi and Trout as Wild and Scenic Rivers will increase public awareness and bring more young people out into Vermont’s incomparable countryside as participants, not just observers.
Both of these impressive projects show the power of citizen action and organization to accomplish something great. And they also show how trails can lead us from one place to another – and occasionally to the fulfillment of our best dreams.
