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A Many-Sided Coin

By Marley Stuart

I

The water was wide and flat and it crawled over stones. Low in summer, the river became a rocky bed of pools. Pregnant with snowmelt in the first cracking days of spring, it was a force you did not enter. This was the Black River in Proctorsville, Vermont. Stand with me before its wrinkled mirror. These are my earliest memories. Up the shady bank and across the railroad tracks is the bakery in the brick opera house, with its early morning smell of ovens and wire rack of loaves. The butchershop, sheathed in peppery smoke, is only a wagon ride through sunny grass away. Back home again to water’s edge. 

My mother bathed me here in the river, down the steep bank from our home near the Depot Street bridge, and also in a lower branch of Twenty Mile Stream, up in the hills. In the bend of bright water, she bathed me among young fish as I was young and smooth, sun-covered stones. When my parents got together with friends they got naked and got in the river and hauled stones up the bank to the woodshed that my father, the engineer, had furnished with a hissing stove and cedar benches. The stones were for the stove, for hot rock massages. This became a ritual among my mother’s teacher friends, and “Sauna Sundays” were born. There they are, picking their way across the lawn, careful not to spill their cups of wine. 

I went to farm school. There were goats and clover and a frozen pond in the winter to skate on. There was a shack on stilts with a rickety staircase, and inside there were pottery wheels for us to throw clay into misshapen bowls for our mothers. My mother taught at the school and would sing with the rest of us when we sat in a circle and sang Don McLean’s never-ending “American Pie” to the headmaster’s dedicated acoustic strumming. The school itself was a great rambling barn with a workshop full of tools and even us kindergartners could play with the hammers and saws. I don’t remember classrooms. We were often outside. Hidden meadows opened in the woods and became known to us. In Echo Field, hip deep in the wild grass, we took turns yelling our names and delighted as the world gave them back.

Eventually I learned this was not everyone’s childhood. It was the great privilege of my life to come up in the cradle of such lush bounty. We visited milkweed meadows to see monarchs hatch, dry their wings, and paper the sky orange. We tapped sugar maples recreationally and on warm days in spring when the sap ran I went with my father to collect the buckets, see the floating bugs, and drink the sweet, chilled nectar. Treasure is the right word for these memories.

No matter what may pass, I will always have the memory of river and stones, of waiting in the cold for the cider press with the other children, winters of heavy snow, and all the rest. Or strip the memories out of me, as the days and years may. This time has done its work, and I couldn’t escape it if I tried. 

II

The cornerstone of such a childhood was a love and respect of the natural world. It was lived more than taught, though it was also taught, a double fortune. Over the years, the value of this fortune has become more apparent and more dear.

As I weigh privilege with responsibility, and find myself indebted to the spirit of that time, I enter the day with questions. Many of the places of my youth still exist as I remember them, unspoiled. Still, the river’s dancing fire, its long green moods. Why am I surprised? Because such places are bound to be spoiled, sooner or later? Questions beget questions. 

Of course, any impression I may have of the permanence of this place is an illusion. Vermont, site of my happy childhood, bastion of progressive politics, is enjoying relative safety from the environmental calamities battering much of the planet. But it is no exception. The people’s republic of Vermont, land stolen and stripped by “settlers,” is a proud American state, liberal and leafy—but only newly releafed, let us not forget. The great forests of this land were erased, cut and sold for profit, and only recently replaced with the thin green parodies that delight each fall with their vivid displays. And the wildfires of the west will undoubtedly come east to erase them again as yearly high temperatures press ever upward and yearly rainfall dwindles. Still, even as I crouch in the spinning shadows at water’s edge, luxuriating in the beauty of my childhood swimming hole, it’s hard not to take them for granted. All those leaves. 

Can we care for the planet, really? How? One side of a many-sided coin. Can we also care for one other and ourselves? What can I hope to do, a boy from a river in Vermont? Alone, well. Maybe I should stay in the river. The cradle of bounty is far behind me, and I see the natural world increasingly threatened, exploited, ignored. I see the earth abused by the powerful, forgotten by the comfortable, and I find myself complicit in its abuse and neglect. I think more of this treasure of mine.

III

In 2018, my wife and I visited my uncle in the Ecuadorian highlands, and near the end of the trip, in Quito, we shared an unforgettable dinner with his colleagues and dear friends, Lori Swanson and Juan Miguel Espinoza. I was seated nearest the decanter of wine and was charged with dispensing drinks around the joyful table. Old stories rekindled, and I was fortunate to be close to their warmth. We spoke of art. Juan Miguel was writing a novel, had been for many years, and I’d just started working on my own. The small table became an arena of names, artists and writers and visionaries whose work we must devour. We stayed at their bed and breakfast in La Mariscal and, a few nights later, were even treated to dinner in their home. The hearty discussions began again. We left close to midnight, fulfilled, and I was struck by their kindness and light.

It was only later that I learned the extent of Lori and Juan Miguel’s work in environmental conservation and education in the region. Since the early 1990’s, they had customized study abroad programs for US universities—coordinating with professional educators and researchers, Indigenous communities, grass-roots conservation initiatives, and international NGOs—and had helped found Fundacíon EcoMinga, which protects and preserves threatened Andean forests. My fortune only grew when, weeks after returning home, I was invited to begin working with them at Andean Study Programs to develop study abroad programs for U.S. university students traveling to Ecuador.

This afforded me the great opportunity to work with the ASP team and and faculty leaders at partnering institutions. I took part in developing programs in Tropical Ecology, Natural History, Health, Human and Social Development, and Spanish Immersion, among others. I was lucky enough to visit the Amazon basin, meet some of its amazing people, and witness what’s at stake in the region. Accompanying groups on their excursions to conservation and ecotourism projects across the country, and in Yasuní, especially, I saw the students changed by the experience. This was deeply engaging experiential learning and authentic cultural exchange. On many levels, this was working. Light bulbs were blinking on. Connections were being made. And I was changed as well. 

IV

It was also through this work that I came to know Lori and Juan Miguel’s daughter, Natalia Espinoza, a singular force with blistering linguistic skills, worlds ahead of me in many ways, and an undergraduate student at Barnard College. She told me of her own ambitious plans to unite existing conservation efforts across South America in order to help protect the threatened and irreplaceable ecosystems of the region. Natalia and I began working together to lay the groundwork for what would become EcoStudio Foundation. And her passion inspired me to explore some of my questions with a little more daring. 

Can we care for the planet and one another, and can we do this through creative projects, as well as strictly scientific ones? Can we take a multidisciplinary approach to the towering social and environmental issues of our day? Can we build a bridge between research and song, between specimen and story? Can we do so with respect and consideration—and maybe even love and abandon? This line of thinking led me to Mary Abbruzzese, a kindred soul from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Talk about love and abandon. Mary quickly became an invaluable member of the team for her experience in the nonprofit sector, keen eye, and generous heart. Can we take a bold move, together, to care for ourselves, each other, and the world?

The pandemic made it only more clear that such action was needed to protect the world’s most crucial ecosystems and to support the people who call them home. As the virus spread and governmental policies cropped up to try to curb it, tourism, and the economy it supports, vanished. And then a multitude of tragedies bloomed as the virus affected the most vulnerable. Our partners in rural communities, who have for generations helped protect and preserve the wild places students love to visit, have been devastated by the pandemic and the economic crisis it has wrought. We are organizing now to help support them.

V

We are developing our programs and fundraising efforts to help study abroad providers recover and grow in the COVID era and beyond. Successful experiential learning depends on myriad players and efforts—from the families who welcome students in their homes, to the Indigenous communities who have long been stewards of the forests, to internationally-lauded research lodges and non-governmental organizations. We’d like to imagine a network of support equal to their vision and generosity. Such a network is vital if study abroad, cultural exchange, and environmental conservation can continue on a meaningful scale in the region.

No fortune is greater than the chance to work with Natalia and Lori and Mary, three unique creative souls, and with our extended organizational family, who have been so generous with their time and advice. We have come together to form EcoStudio Foundation with the aim of uniting conservation, education, and the arts to build a more just world for all.

I hope we can imagine a future where the three are intrinsically bound, threads of a common strand. I hope we can learn from those who have long been environmental stewards of the land. I hope we can do this together, and in the wild spirit of my youth to which I’m indebted. And so I find myself back at the river, silver running through the shadows on its surface. I re-examine these childhood memories for lessons.

What makes them treasure? Not just the blessing of forest, but holding class within its emerald chamber. The miracle of a vessel, however misshapen, forming from clay. This treasure, arrayed before me, begins to change. The gold bars of memory form spokes of a wheel, pointing outward. Possibilities splinter to pierce the questions and pin them in place. But I cannot be one man in a room keeping his treasure to himself. If I am to enter this thicket of questions, I’ll need you by my side.