For as long she can remember, Alethea Bouton has always felt a strong connection to nature and wildlife conservation. She attributes this love and appreciation to her mother, Jennifer Bouton, who has always shared her own strong feelings to the intricacies of the nature around us. “Even things that seem very simplistic are actually very complicated, and there’s always something a little new to learn about behavior or how the different parts of ecology fit together,” Jennifer says. “It’s just beautiful and it’s interesting.” As Alethea and her mother were driving home one day, they passed the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS), and Jennifer thought it would be the perfect place for Alethea to explore and deepen her interest in wildlife. On their first visit, they attended one of the VINS homeschooling programs, and they’ve been returning to VINS every year since Alethea was eight.

Alethea is currently enrolled in her first year at the Wildlife Science program at Paul Smith’s College, where she is studying fish and wildlife science. She has plans for a possible career path as a wildlife technician or conservation biologist. Alethea was able to explore these ambitions at VINS before attending college and honing in on her specific career interests. Alethea was most interested in the Baby Bird Feeder Program at VINS, after hearing a presentation about baby birds from a faculty member there. “He talked about the birds in a way that really made me feel like it was exciting,” Alethea says. “The excitement he had about how important they were inspired me.”

Alethea has been volunteering as a part of the Baby Bird Feeder Program at VINS every year since she was 12, and her mother Jennifer has joined her in volunteering over the years. On a weekly basis, their responsibilities include feeding different baby bird species every 15-30 minutes during a four hour period and administering solid foods with forceps, or liquid foods with a syringe for young birds or birds with a specific diet. VINS has given Alethea the opportunity to have hands-on experience with animals and information related to her future career, and has also provided her with leadership skills through her job as a camp counselor there in the summer.

Alethea and Jennifer also volunteer for a lights display that VINS hosts in the winter called “A Forest of Lights”, where they fill their landscape with light displays for visitors to walk through at night. There are towers, picture stations, and globes that the mother-daughter duo help manage, in addition to directing people through the displays, monitoring slippery areas, and helping with traffic control. Not only do these volunteer opportunities support VINS and their community, but they are also special moments shared between Jennifer and Alethea.

Alethea Bouton, holding a turtle

VINS hosts a summer program called “Nature Camp” for kindergarteners to eighth graders with different themes each week. Alethea began her journey as a Nature Camp instructor four years ago, and she plans to continue spending her summers there. Before becoming an instructor, VINS prepared Alethea with extensive training to accommodate all types of campers and possible situations. The training lasts about a week and includes first aid, CPR, basic safety training, what to bring on hikes, and preparation for extreme weather. They also prepare their instructors on how to handle interpersonal conflicts and misbehavior, help campers cope with their emotions, and how to re-engage campers with the group when they feel isolated. Alethea feels prepared every summer, she says: “[Our] approach [isn’t] just to corral the kids and make sure you don’t lose any, but also making sure that each camper is cared for and seen in a personal way. It’s confidence-inspiring to know all of this but to have also practiced it.” Alethea also applies the knowledge she’s acquired from her volunteer work at VINS to her work as a summer camp instructor. “I enjoy sharing what I know, not only the basic knowledge but also sharing fun facts about the stuff [they’re] learning about,” she says. This allows her to share her passion with youth and contribute positively to their summer camp experiences.

Growing up, Alethea has always been inspired by her mother’s connection and appreciation for nature as she’s always enjoyed being outside. “I’ve always just enjoyed being outside,” Jennifer reflects. “I’m a gardener. I don’t even care what I’m doing: It could be hiking, working in the compost pile, planting seeds, watching the bird feeder, it could be whatever.” Her mother’s love for nature, alongside the opportunity to volunteer and work at VINS, has led Alethea to define her own relationship with nature. “I feel closest to my faith when I’m outside and in nature,” Alethea says. “I feel a really important call to help to steward it and preserve it, because it’s something that’s really amazing and important to the whole planet.”

Harry Gorman has had a hand in the story of Vermont Spirits since its beginnings in 2004, when Duncan Holiday, the founder of the Quechee-based craft distillery, expressed interest in starting the company. Together, they put an idea into motion, and today, it’s a legacy that sticks with the company on their newest journey: turning one of the Upper Valley’s oldest commercial buildings into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, named after Gorman himself.

Up until devoting his time and crafting abilities into distilling at Vermont Spirits, Gorman was a carpenter specializing in restoring old properties and the plumbing inside of them. In 1988, Gorman had built a house in his neighborhood in Barnet, Vermont for Holiday, and they had become friends during their time as neighbors. In 2000, Holiday introduced the idea of opening the distillery to Gorman, who was in Ireland working on a project at the time, but expressed his potential interest. Later that summer, they decided on a timeline that would work for both of them, with a goal of opening Vermont Spirits to the public in 2004.

Harry Gorman, at the bar in Harry’s Cocktail Lounge.

Gorman initially helped by building the distillery in Barnet, but Holiday wanted to involve him more in the business, and Gorman agreed. Gorman started out as an apprentice, then became a distiller, and throughout the years, went on to be an operations manager and is now the company’s master distiller. In addition to his distilling skills, his carpentry and plumbing skills still come in handy to maintain the mechanical aspects of the distillery. Gorman says, “My role is doing lots of different things, keeping the mechanicals operating, and working because I put them all there, so I know how they work and how to maintain them. I try to take the load off the other distiller as much as possible.” Gorman is also a board member of the company and the company is owned by many investors, including himself, and his job as a board member is to represent shareholders to the board.

With Gorman having been with the company from the start, he has also seen the vast and important changes it’s gone through over the past twenty years. Holiday stepped down from his position in 2008, and a new CEO, Steve Johnson, took over until 2018. “Companies change and the people who run them change,” says Gorman. “For the continued growth and expansion of the company, we chose a new CEO [in 2018], Randy Carlson, and a management group to help run us and build our company into something bigger. In the last five years it’s grown a lot.”

The company makes spirits derived entirely from maple sap and wild juniper, and other ingredients special to Vermont. “They are a one of a kind thing in the world,” says Gorman. Vermont Spirits is currently distributed in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, sold at boutique distributors across the U.S., and available online.

Vermont Spirits was originally headquartered in Barnet and eventually moved to Quechee in 2009 because of a law that had changed, allowing them to sell products from a tasting room housed in the distillery itself. The original Barnet location was tucked away and hard for customers to access in the winter and during mud season, and Quechee allowed them to have more foot traffic and expand their customer base. The company has been successful in expanding their business with Harry’s Cocktail Lounge in September, right next door to the distillery in Quechee Gorge Village. Since Gorman has been with the company from the beginning, the Vermont Spirits team thought it was only appropriate to name the lounge after him.

The plank house, now the home of Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, was built around 1790 and is believed to be the oldest commercial building in Windsor County. Over the years, it’s been a trading post, a family home, and a retail outlet. “We’ve watched it over the years and have always thought it would be great to have it a part of our complex,” says Gorman. With Gorman’s background in carpentry and building restoration, he led the project of bringing new life to the plank house as it became Harry’s Lounge. The walls are made up of wood planks that are three-inch thick boards and anywhere from 10 inches wide to 25 inches wide, all exposed in the lounge and bar area. Gorman also created an outside deck connecting the two buildings for outdoor enjoyment for customers in the warmer months. “When you go into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, you’re sitting in a piece of history. It’s a really amazing old Vermont building and our products represent

Gorman hopes the lounge will allow tourists and locals to embrace what Vermont has to offer, he says. “We get a lot of tourists, which is really important to us, but we also love having the local people come in and talk to us and having Harry’s Cocktail Lounge will only help that happen.”

“I wear a lot of different hats,” says Michaela Lavelle, referring to her work as assistant librarian at the Quechee Public Library. In managing this space for library patrons, Lavelle is in charge of programming, finding volunteers and delegating jobs to them, running the tech desk, maintaining the library’s website and social m edia pages, reading advisory, assisting patrons with finding books and storytime, and crafting events.

While she puts time and passion into all aspects of her job, Lavelle’s specialty is programming. With this task comes observing those who visit the library and what they’re interested in, and then curating events that will draw a crowd and the community based on this research. The Quechee Library has a strong regular patron base which Lavelle takes advantage of when planning events. She’s able to hone in on what people are already interested in and hopefully bring in new crowds.

Michaela Lavelle, assistant librarian, outside of the Quechee Library.

In early July, Lavelle organized a special storytime reading and Q&A with Kellie Gerardi – a bioastronautics researcher and one of the first 100 women in space – who has published children’s books that celebrate all things outer space. They ended this event by bringing telescopes out on their local green and stargazing. Coming up in October, Lavelle has organized an event with Louise Penny, a mystery author that library patrons have shown interest in, to perform a reading of a play written exclusively for libraries. Lavelle has also planned for a reading by local author Ken Cadow, a discussion around wealth disparity in the community, and has partnered with the Hartford High School librarian to run a book group with their high school students.

Lavelle also wants to attract members of the community who don’t regularly visit the library and younger patrons to participate in an event this upcoming fall, which will feature an Oreo tasting. Lavelle is encouraging anyone to come in at any point during the day and taste-test Oreo flavors and cast their votes on their favorites. “I try to think of who isn’t coming [to events already],” she says. “It’s nice to have a program that is silly but also easy, time and energy wise.” Programming that allows for flexible participation (without a hard start and end time) is much easier to organize than hosting events within a certain time frame, and it gives more patrons the opportunity to participate at a time that works for them in their personal schedules, Lavelle adds.

The Quechee Library has given Lavelle the space and creative freedom to incorporate fun new ideas to improve the library experience for the whole community: “There has been an overwhelming amount of ‘if you can imagine it and are willing to put the time in to plan it, then go for it,’” she says. “I’m very lucky to get to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and I’ve been encouraged to do that.” Over time and as the library environment continues to evolve, Lavelle hopes to draw in more community members in their 20s and 30s as well as teenagers through a variety of programming offerings.

Walking on the rail trail, one of Michaela Lavelle’s favorite hobbies

While she coordinates opportunities with authors and organizes spaces for patrons to expand their knowledge, Lavelle also spends her time managing the library’s tech desk. The tech desk is there to ensure that library technology is easily accessible and to provide patrons with tech support and to answer questions. “Folks see the library as a place where, if they are struggling with tech, operating a device, printing, or faxing, they can find help.” Lavelle doesn’t consider herself a tech expert, but she’lll work with anyone that comes in to resolve an issue. “Patrons know that and are willing to sit there and Google with me and we’ll figure it out together,” she says.

The tech desk isn’t the only technology related task Lavelle is responsible for; she also runs the library’s social media pages. “If someone is curious about the library, they can look and see what we’re about and what we’re doing, but also know that this is a community space that they can use,” Lavelle says. For the library, social media is both a tool for advertising and publicizing events as well as community outreach and fostering connections with patrons and the local community. Lavelle focuses on promoting new events and books, but also reminds the community of the public services that the library already provides. Lavelle has found that it’s often pictures of the library building that get the most likes on social media, which she thinks is due to the fact that people like to feel connected to the library and see an example of its physical presence as an important institution in the community.

Painting the book drop at the Wilder Club & Library

Lavelle moved to the area from Texas three years ago for a job at Dartmouth College working in Student Affairs. After a couple of years, a friend of hers who worked in libraries kept sending her job openings posted by the Quechee Library. At the time, Lavelle wasn’t looking for a new job, nor did she feel like she had the right experience for the position as she had never worked in a library environment before, but one day, she decided to look into it. “At one point, I read the job description and it was exactly what I wanted to be doing,” Lavelle remembers. “Something community-embedded, with lots of programming, and a dynamic job.”

From her previous experience working with nonprofits and event programming throughout college, she had more than enough knowledge to be an asset to the library, and she has continuously proven to do so in her current role as assistant librarian. Coming up on her one year anniversary at the library, Lavelle has cultivated a strong personal connection to and joy for her work, “Overtime, being in the role, I’ve grown my confidence in it and because I’ve learned more and more about the community, I know how to put on events that are going to either attract a new group or identify where holes are [so I can try] to fill them,” she says. “A void that a lot of us feel is a connection with the people around us, and the library is a space that is meant to bring people in to be curious, be open to things, and for learning.”