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23rd Sep 2005
Burlington
Friday, 23rd September, 2005
Awake early again this morning, almost before the light but not before whatever birds they are kicked off with their calling. Anne discovered that the ‘breakfast’ element of our bed and breakfast was in a fridge in the wardrobe … and so, breakfast consisted of a yoghurt and a museli bar.
Paul collected me at nine for our first appointment which was a few blocks along the road with Breck, the Robert and Genevieve Patrick Professor of Watershed Science and Planning – (Are you serious?) its a great title, but only just fits on his card and takes hours to type in here!
He’s recently finished renovating or recovering his house from years as a student squat and has obviously had quite a job on. Plenty to discuss arising from last nights talk – mostly about the basin management similarities of the Spey, Notueko (in NZ) and the Champlain basin; one thing quite different is that the Americans have identified the sea lamprey as a major problem in their basin management plan .. for its detrimental impacts on salmonids ! … as a result are expending considerable effort to knock seven bells out of them; as some of you will be aware, we on the other hand, have identified the critters as being of European worth and have whole rivers designated for their protection.
On to Delahunty mid morning to get into the detail of the picture archive side of the Vermont Landscape Change Programme - enquired innocently at one point as to why the University of Vermont is known as UVM – and not UVT per the other Vermont abbreviations. “Ah, its from the latin; Universitas Verides Montes” – Uni of the Green Mountains - no wonder its known as UVM.
Really interesting look through the web development, evaluation and the finer points of the outreach program, some spectacular photographs of flood events here on the Winooski and quite a remarkable number of buildings surviving in the state.
We lunched downtown and then on for a quick breeze through the Echo centre on the waterfront; big roomy functional space and some nice interpretation ideas – huge tanks with various fish living out in lake Champlain … and a pickled sea lamprey in the resource room.
Anne meanwhile, decided that the life of a student was in keeping and retired to an internet café with book and very large cappuccino for most of the morning and generally kept tabs on the student life in the Downtown, before strolling the waterfront, lunching and meeting us back at the guest house for a drive out along the Winooski in the mid aftrernoon.
The trip was slightly delayed as I tried to get my head around the complex system of navigation out here - you either go east/west or north/south and, well suffice to say there was a bit of wandering around a few blocks east of where I was supposed to be!
We visited the site of a picture postcard and I did a quick retake from nearby; the actual picture would have been from the second floor of the old brick building behind me but nonetheless the effect is spectacular and its amazing how much of the landform in the area and the development has been influenced by a single flood event from ’27. All the bridges were taken out for example, huge terraces cut through the valley sides up to twenty feet deep. It also highlights the sense of the some of the settlers in locating their dwellings and the older farms are just slightly raised out of harms way.
Paul pointed out the design evolution of the old barns, the older ones, which I think they call English Barns have doors on the sides, but these have caused a problem when the snow falls off the roof and dumps itself and blocks off the door. Various modifications have been made like little porch constructions in order to chuck snow either side, but the later buildings have their doors in the end to avoid the problem altogether.
The water control now on the river is made by huge inflatable booms, which they can easily collapse. The falls have been dammed for power take off and have no fish ladders; the way they manage this is to collect the fish in large buckets, haul them up the thirty or so feet, empty them into the back of a truck and drive them along up stream and tip them back in – the truck was there on standby for this process.
We joined half the world in Burlington this evening trying to get a meal; settled on the Three Tomatos Italian restaurant which was great, but unfortunately we were both slightly beaten by jet lag.
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