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.”

If you were in elementary school in the 1960s, chances are you were one of nearly 50 million people who watched the historic launch of the first astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, into orbit around the Earth. All of those original astronauts, including John Glenn and Alan Shepard, have passed away, but their legacy of space exploration and the search for life on other planets, including Mars, is firmly established through the continuing work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

For Quechee resident Stephen Gorevan, a robotics engineer and co-investigator with the Mars Science Laboratory Mission at NASA, the Mercury 7 launch inspired a lifelong career supporting NASA space exploration. “For me, it was like, “Wow!”, and I was hooked,” Stephen says, remembering watching the launch as a young child on a television placed on the stage in his public school cafeteria. “I didn’t want to be an astronaut, but I did want to be part of our efforts to go to the Moon.”

Stephen Gorevan

Stephen initially thought that his chances of joining NASA were slim because all of the programs were based in Texas, California, and Florida, and he was from New York. “I thought, ‘they’re not going to let me get involved’. So I went to music school, and forgot my dreams of working at NASA,” he says. Eventually, pursuing his lifelong dream won out, and Stephen left music school and transitioned to studying engineering, earning a master’s degree from Columbia University. “My best friend offered to start a business together, and in 1983, we founded Honeybee Robotics. We were young upstart kids who were studying robots in college, and at that time, businesses like IBM, 3M, and FedEx all wanted to automate.”

The stars were aligned for introducing robotic engineering to space missions as well. With the tragic explosion of the Challenger spacecraft, NASA decided to turn the dangerous jobs over to robots. “I got an appointment with a NASA employee just by serendipity and got my dream job at NASA,” Stephen says. “When President Clinton announced that it looked like there might be life on Mars, it opened the floodgates to explore Mars with robotic devices. Suddenly, I found myself going from a small company in New York to helping NASA explore Mars.”

Honeybee Robotics supported the 2004 Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars, supplying scientific instruments on both missions, which allowed the collection of new data not possible on previous explorations. “My job was to send data collection commands to the rovers exploring Mars,” Stephen says. According to NASA, Spirit and Opportunity confirmed that water was long standing on the surface of Mars in ancient times by studying the rock record, an indication that life might have been present on the ‘red planet’.

Stephen continued his work with three more rovers – Curiosity, Perseverance, and the Phoenix Lander, exploring craters and other areas on Mars. Right from his cabin in Quechee, he now sends daily commands exclusively to the Curiosity rover – the most advanced rover NASA had designed to date when it launched in 2012. “When it’s my turn to ‘uplink’ a command set to Curiosity, I am specifically acting as a Payload Uplink Lead (or PUL) sending a program to an instrument suite on Curiosity named SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars),” Stephen explains. “The SAM team decides they want to run an experiment on Mars and a team of engineers like me participates in a careful execution of what the science objectives are.”

Stephen prepares two days in advance of the uplink process to be sure the program is correctly designed. “The day of uplink, I am looking out of my picture window [in Quechee] with Moosilauke in the distance, and I am online with about 50 engineers and scientists as we refine our commands over the course of an eight hour day, culminating with the commands being sent to Mars by large antennas in California, Spain, and Australia,” he says. Stephen notes that the uplink process is intense because ‘no mistakes’ is the goal, but working remotely from the bucolic Upper Valley helps ease some of the tension. The whole process of implementing the computer program some 140 million miles from Earth takes several hours from uplink to receiving results. Curiosity is looking for ancient habitats on Mars that would have been suitable for life fossils of amoebas and microbes, but its primary mission is to study rocks, dirt, and geoformations, as well as minerals like granite, iron, basalt, and sulphur.

So what are the space rovers learning? According to Stephen, NASA’s #1 priority is to understand the mystery of the origin of life. “If any other planet is going to support life, it’s Mars because it’s so close,” he says. “What we have proved so far is that there were seas, lakes, oceans, and rivers on Mars. Anywhere on Earth where there is liquid water, there is life.”

After decades of exploring Mars and analyzing the data, an important discovery is that the ultraviolet and cosmic rays hitting the surface of Mars are so intense that humans would not survive being exposed to them, but still there’s hope. “We’re close,” says Stephen. Ten years ago, an instrument Stephen programs – the tunable laser spectrometer – discovered high levels of methane on Mars. “Methane can be produced from volcanoes, geysers, and microbes. Scientists suspect microbes, because they show up on many mornings, and there are no volcanoes on Mars.”

Before working on Curiosity, Stephen worked for 20 years on the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers. His group of Honeybee Robotics engineers designed and built the Rock Abrasion Tool pictured.

NASA’s work continues with new missions to Europa (a Jupiter moon), Venus, our Moon, and unobstructed observations of the Milky Way. As a member of NASA’s Curiosity Science Team, Stephen works from his home in Quechee and often travels to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He recently sold Honeybee Robotics to Blue Origin, a space exploration company owned by Jeff Bezos.

Future NASA missions will gather actual Martian rocks for analysis and bring them to Earth. Still, it’s likely that if humans were ever to live on Mars, it would have to be underground, and any outside activity would require a space suit. “I admit, I prefer to do my planetary exploration from my kitchen table,” Stephen says.

For more information on the Curiosity mission, visit NASA’s website science.nasa.gov.

When Kathryn Wooters, resident of Quechee since 2005, was contemplating retirement from her CPA practice in Boston, she began tire-kicking projects to take up some of her newfound spare time. With experience in international operations in diverse industries, it made sense to look at some international philanthropic foundations. She longed to contribute to something that would make a difference in the world.

A baby elephant from the Game Rangers effort

Conveniently, on International Women’s Day, female executives from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) met in an in-person conference to discuss their projects, goals, and needs. Kathryn was inspired by what she heard, and in 2022, she took a dive down the rabbit hole of elephant rescue in Africa. Elephants have been at the mercy of the climate, poachers, and habitat encroachment from development, and in some places could soon become endangered species.

On a trip to Malawi, half a world away from Quechee, Kathryn observed firsthand the translocation of an elephant herd that required a high level of expertise, and was not without its dangers. Kathryn explained, “The translocation efforts [were] highly choreographed. A helicopter herds elephants to an open area, then darts them with tranquilizers. Mothers first, so they do not fall on their babies and crush them. Watching the final matriarch protecting the babies is heartbreaking.” Once the elephants are tranquilized, the team moves in to prepare them for transport. They were then safely trucked eight hours to their new home in a north Malawi park. “As observers,” she continued, “It was joyful to see the babies reunited with their mothers and caretakers.”

Working with elephants at the IFAW sanctuary

In 2023, Kathryn volunteered for a project with Game Rangers, an international organization that protects wildlife and educates the populations who are encroaching on wildlife habitat. She participated at three rescue locations in Zambia. There she got into the nitty gritty of elephant care, cleaning then preparing stalls for new occupants, and later bottle-feeding an orphaned baby elephant.

Additionally, Kathryn closely observed two successful and empowering projects created and led by women. She was struck by the stark contrast between the freedoms enjoyed by women in the U.S. versus those not available to women in Zambia. Kathryn shared, “Women have no rights in Zambia. The most basics in life that Americans take for granted are beyond the Zambian women’s wildest expectations, save water wells.” She was particularly inspired by the strength and resilience of the Zambian women.

Kathryn feeds a baby elephant at the IFAW sanctuary.

While researching other elephant volunteer programs, Kathryn discovered an organization called Empowers Africa, which supports programs in the areas of human empowerment, wildlife protection, and land conservation. She was able to attend its annual event in Manhattan last May, along with colleague, and fellow Quechee and Boston resident, Caroline DeStefano. The meeting featured a short documentary film produced by Empowers Africa’s director of documentary development and partnerships, Martha McGuinness, called R.E.S.C.U.E., (bit.ly/4d9bMRY) about the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, an elephant rescue located at Namunyak Community Conservancy in the Samburu region of northern Kenya. Reteti Elephant Sanctuary was established in 2016 by Katie Rowe, in conjunction with the Sarara Foundation. Katie currently manages the facility, and conveniently was in attendance at the Empowers Africa meeting.

Kathryn was so moved by the information presented that Reteti Elephant Sanctuary became her focus. She spoke at length with Katie Rowe, and was introduced to Sarara Foundation philanthropy and social impact advisor, Mike Smiles, who lives in Burlington. Kathryn and Mike’s conversations led to the next logical step – an evening presentation in Quechee.

Kathryn and her team are currently planning an evening presentation at Quechee Club on October 13 to introduce Reteti Elephant Rescue to the Quechee community. The presentation will include a screening of the film, Shaba, which is currently playing at the American Museum of Natural History exhibit, Discover the Secret World of Elephants. Janet Wu, award winning Boston journalist, will moderate the event.

Elephant translocation in Malawi

Editor’s Note: Craig Allsopp and his wife, Jo Allsopp, came to Quechee 17 years ago after moving from New Jersey. They are QLLA residents and avid golfers, and they enjoy many of the activities offered by the Quechee Club, including golfing, skiing, and pickleball. Craig served on the QLLA Board of Trustees for a number of years, and Jo is an active member of the Green Committee.

Craig is a retired journalist who worked for United Press International (UPI) and Dow Jones. Jo has worked as an office manager, dentist, and in real estate, as well as full-time mother to their three children, who are now grown up and come to visit with their own children.

In April, Craig and Jo attended the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia for the first time together. Read on to hear Craig’s firsthand account of their experience over the course of the four-day event, and why they’d go again in a heartbeat.

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Every golf fan dreams about it. Tickets to the Masters.

The text came in January from Jo’s sister. “Do you and Craig want to go to the Masters? Mike’s ex-wife can’t use her tickets this year?” I barely heard the words before Jo said: “I’m going to text back ‘yes’.”

Fast forward to Wednesday, April 10 – the day we arrived in Georgia to attend golf’s most prestigious and iconic major tournament. For golf fans, the Masters is like the World Series, the Super Bowl, and a heavyweight championship fight all rolled into one. It is a celebration of spring – an homage to tradition and a reminder that shared experiences like the Masters are the best.

The exact number of ticket holders, called patrons, is a closely guarded secret. We guessed about 50,000 people joined us on the course each of the four tournament days. Many have attended for decades. Some are diehards who know every blade of grass over the 18 holes at Augusta National. Others are casual fans who scored tickets from friends or family members or the annual Masters lottery. Others are the lucky guests of corporate sponsors. Nearly everyone attending wears a golf shirt sporting a club logo. I was by the sixth green on Sunday when a fan recognized my Quechee Club shirt and said how much he loved playing our courses. Things like that just happen at the Masters.

Thursday, April 11

We awoke in darkness. Power was out at the cottage where we stayed. It had stormed overnight, with enough rain and wind to postpone the starting tee times by a couple of hours. We checked the weather on our phones and saw it was likely to clear by late morning. We didn’t see our phones again until 8pm on Thursday night.

Cell phones are not permitted on the grounds during the Masters. Maybe a player or a green-jacketed member slips a phone past security, but no one else stands a chance.  I asked patrons – from age 20 to 70 – what they thought of the cell phone ban. Without exception, they praised it.

“I like it a lot,” said one woman. “It’s a nice break from my phone. Instead of staring at it, I watch the action and make new friends.” But even without distractions, watching the best players in the world can be dangerous.

We were in the grandstand by the fifth green on Thursday when Will Zalatoris flared his approach shot to the right. “It’s coming this way,” one fan shouted. A moment later we heard a “thunk.” About 20 feet away a man grabbed his head. Blood streamed down his face as he was escorted to first aid.

Zalatoris walked over to check on the man. He was clearly shaken. No golfer – pro or hacker – wants to hurt anyone with an errant shot. But Zalatoris regrouped after a poor pitch to the green and chipped in for a par.

Jo and I circled the course to watch former winners like Phil Mickelson and Freddie Couples, as well as current players Keegan Bradley (Jo’s favorite), Scottie Scheffler, Max Homa and Justin Thomas.

We watched Thomas hit a soaring drive off the 11th tee. And, yes, we caught Tiger Woods on his approach to the ninth green. He hit a nice shot to about 15 feet, missed his birdie putt, and went on to make par.

Friday, April 12th

We dressed for the cool, crisp morning and shed our long sleeves by 11am. Not a cloud in the sky but windy – and the golfers’ scores showed it.

Jo and I found a spot in the grandstand by the fourth green. Most of the players missed the green or played short to have an easier chip on the 240-yard par three. Not many played it as well as 2023 U.S. Open winner Matt Fitzpatrick. He holed a 20-footer after his birdie chip ran well past the hole.

Watching threesome after threesome make bogey fours, we knew scoring on Friday was going to be high. The 20-mile-per hour gusting winds rattled the field with many players posting scores over par. 

Among those missing the cut – 2015 winner Jordan Spieth and current world number four Windham Clark. You could feel the excitement build going into the final 36 holes.

Saturday, April 13

Day three is often called “moving day at the Masters.” Players at the back of the pack play aggressively in hopes of moving up the leaderboard. Those at the top like co-leaders Scheffler, Homa, and Bryson DeChambeau work to separate themselves from the field – while trying to avoid costly mistakes. 

We sat by the first tee in the bright sunshine to watch last year’s winner Jon Rahm tee off. We didn’t have our own seats; we “borrowed” two of the ubiquitous green chairs you see on TV.

These chairs represent a most cherished Masters tradition. Early in the morning, owners pick a spot where they want to watch later in the day. Often they leave newly purchased shirts and hats by their chairs. It’s like putting them in a bank vault.

No one messes with patron chairs or merch at the Masters. You may sit in unoccupied chairs for as long as you like. You get up when an owner returns, taps your shoulder and says, “excuse me, I’m back.”

Later we moved to the third hole in time to see Rickie Fowler make a six-footer for birdie. Minutes later on the fourth we watched Rory McIlroy hit a high-arcing tee shot just past the hole. His downhill birdie putt broke right to miss the cup. The collective “awwww” reverberated across nearby fairways.

Seeing the Masters live is not the same as watching on TV. You really don’t see very much. Instead you embrace your role as a gallery member. You cheer for birdies. You roar for eagles. And when Tiger Woods walks to a green – no matter his score – you stand and clap in what is a ground-shaking ovation. 

Sunday, April 14

Another spectacular day with sunny skies and, finally, light wind.

Tension hung in the air when we walked in the North Gate. Would Scottie Scheffler keep the lead to win his second Masters? Or would Homa, Collin Morikawa, or rookie Ludvig Aburg break out for an upset win?

We walked the front nine and part of the back. Players finished to polite applause as patrons gathered around the 18th green. We grabbed sandwiches – $1.50 for egg salad, $3 for ham and cheese – and beers from a concession stand and moved toward the ninth green in time to catch the final two groups.

Playing with Homa and at six under par, Aberg curled in a downhill 30-footer for birdie and a tie for the lead with Scheffler. The cheers echoed through the tall pines.

Minutes later, Scheffler landed his approach shot on the ninth 20 feet past the pin. The ball spun back, rolling directly toward the cup. The gallery roar sounded like a freight train as the ball just missed going in for an eagle two. 

Scheffler tapped in for birdie to take a lead he extended on the back nine to win his second green jacket by four shots.

To some, watching a golf tournament four days in a row may seem like a lot. Not so at the Masters where time slows down.

Someone asked me the other day if we’d do it again. My answer: We’ll be looking for a text next January that says Mike’s ex-wife can’t use her tickets! 

We’ve been here so long, we have post office box number 2.” John and Agnes O’Brien, Quechee residents of over 50 years, share this tidbit while reminiscing on the Quechee village of years past. The O’Brien’s holding post box 2 is truly a marker of how long they’ve been here. How the O’Briens talk about Quechee is a marker of how much they love it.

John O’Brien and his wife Agnes first came to Vermont in the 1960s after being invited by leaf-peeper friends. The two liked it so much, they returned the following year, and the year after that. Before settling on Quechee, they tried out different towns from the Northwest to the Southeast. When they first heard about Quechee from a friend, John said “I’m not interested.” But they found themselves down in Woodstock and noticed the Quechee sign. Their interest piqued, they checked out the area – which at the time was only the old bit of the base lodge (the original pro shop). John took one look at the golf course and said: “Where do I sign up?”

But the story of the O’Briens in Quechee starts long before their arrival here. John had a friend in college, Joe, who was crazy for a girl, Judy O’Neill, who needed a ride to Oyster Harbors for the summer; Joe wanted John to come along as Judy was bringing a friend named Agnes Sullivan. John laughed and said “I’m a poor boy from Charlestown; there’s no way I could get through the gate at Oyster Harbor!” but he went along just the same. He got on well with Agnes. They dated on and off, but lost touch when they two went to separate colleges. Four years later, John got a call from his buddy Joe. Judy had tragically been killed in an automobile accident, and Joe was hoping John would be able to pick up Agnes when she returned to Boston for the funeral. “I drove over to Copley Square,” John remembers, “We went down to the Back Bay train station. The train pulled in, the conductor placed the steps, and this woman stepped down, just stunning. She looked at me. I looked at her. And a year and a half later we were married.”

John and Agnes continued to stay in the Boston area after their marriage in 1962, John working for the IRS and Agnes as a special education teacher. It was during this time that John started a law practice of his own and the two found their way to a summer place in Quechee.

In the early 1970s, Quechee was still being built; there weren’t yet a lot of rentals, so the O’Brien family would stay at the Hotel Coolidge in White River Junction. “I do remember the good old days staying at the Coolidge,” John recalls, “We had a golf pro here, Jim Hudson. Saturday night he’d have a cookout, right in front of the 10th tee (then the first tee).” John remembers 30 to 40 people attending and the four Quechee Corporation salesmen who lived at the Parker House (where the corporation was originally headquartered) doing a barbershop quartet for entertainment. After the BBQ, there was Western music and dance at the Coolidge. “For a boy from Charlestown, this was something!”

After a few years staying at the Coolidge, in 1974 the O’Briens bought a house on Main Street. “That was the original stagecoach stop,” John shares. “We basically raised our kids in that home.” The O’Brien kids include Judi, Timothy, Susan, David, and Joan. Both David and Joan were born while up here in Quechee, Agnes recalls.

Agnes and John both remember those early years in their Quechee second home fondly. One memory that stands out to them both is the Ski Hill Sleigh. “Back then they had a sleigh that was kept down on Marshland Farm. The gentlemen would drive it up Main Street and stop: ‘O’Brien kids get on here!’ They’d all be ready and have their skis, jump in the back of the sleigh, and it would take them right up to the ski hill. We didn’t even have to get out of bed!”

Unlike the kids, John stayed away from the ski hill. “I was happy to sit at the bottom of the hill and watch them come down.” Agnes was a little more adventurous, skiing for awhile but stopping after she felt it was too risky. “I think it was the day Susan’s ski came down without Susan!” Agnes remembers.

Agnes, John and their children all recall how much the kids loved being up here. In addition to skiing, the little pond now on the golf course was their swimming hole. “When we started going to Quechee, we went swimming at the pond at the first hole Lakeland,” eldest O’Brien daughter Judi says, “People are always surprised when they hear we used to swim at the Quechee pond!”

The O’Brien kids spent every summer in Quechee and many Thanksgivings alongside other Quechee families. “We were always busy with things to do as QLLA was starting to grow,” Judi says.

Agnes recalls how the family enjoyed the Balloon Festival from their backyard: “We could sit right there and walk right down. We just sat in our chairs and watched what was going on.” In the quiet community, the kids were able to walk up to the club: “It was a great place,” Agnes muses.

Their kids feel the same way. Two or three of her children were sitting around the table one winter and Agnes remembers her daughter saying, “’Aren’t we lucky?’”

The friendships made in that early Quechee community have endured. Two of Judi’s best friends today are people she met in Quechee, and the O’Brien kids still return with their families for the Fourth of July, often running into old friends and their kids enjoying Quechee.

The tight community made the O’Briens’ years in Quechee special. “Everybody knew everybody,” John says. He recalls a friend (and scratch golfer) Bill Purcell purchased the house that had belonged to the farmer who originally sold the land to the Quechee Lakes Corporation. The farmer had moved out – “He couldn’t take the flatlanders, too much noise” – and QLC had redone the home, but six months after Bill purchased it, he still hadn’t moved in. When John asked him why, Bill replied, “’John, you know the farmer in the winter used to bring the cows and the pigs into the kitchen and dining room, and I’m still trying to get rid of the smell!’”

John was also instrumental in shaping Quechee Club as we know it today. As president of the QLLA board, John was key in a number of events that took place, including the vote for QLLA to accept the deed of Lake Pinneo and the Lakeland Golf Course from the QLC, which he considers one of his proudest moments. “I put it on the agenda and it had a vote of 5-5.” John had to break the tie: “I looked out the window and said to myself ‘I’m not giving away $1,000,000.” He broke the vote. “So every time I go up to the starter’s shack, I always say, ‘I want to play on my golf course,’” John says with a laugh.

John was elected president of the QLLA board after some of the folks with whom he played golf suggested he’d be a good candidate. It was in 1978, about six months after John’s election, that QLLA began their fight with the QLC, from whom they ultimately separated. “We had a class action lawsuit,” John says. There were some contentious meetings as QLLA landowners, the QLLA board, and the QLC hashed things out. Ultimately, negotiations came to a standstill, and John, alongside Don Gannon, and Jim Lightburn, steered the Class Action lawsuit representing the landowners. In 1979, the QLC was sold to a new owner, and the lawsuit was settled. John was instrumental in helping the landowners succeed in the lawsuit, and he is most proud of the capitol improvement fund, established by the corporation and funded through a portion of real estate sales proceeds. With the fund, QLLA was able to build a number of amenities including a wading pool and cabana, facilities including a storm shelter on the course, and a tennis deck pavilion and pro shop.

John remembers his QLLA work with Don and Jim fondly: “Their work effort was immense and unreimbursed. They were a joy to work with; there was never a dull moment or a cross word.”

“It was a hell of a lot of fun,” John says, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Nowadays, while still working in his law practice with his son Tuesday through

Thursday down in Natick, John and Agnes have a more leisurely life up here in Quechee. While so many of the folks they were close with when they came here are gone, “We’re still puffing along,” Agnes says. The pair continue to golf. “Now we make up our own rules,” Agnes laughs, “You get to be 84, you make your own rules. You don’t like that shot? Well, do it again!”

Their children frequently visit, often joining them for golf: “They grew up on this golf course,” John says, “They all play.” Their grandkids come up as well, enjoying Quechee Kids Camp in the summers and skiing in the winters.

While John and Agnes spend time visiting the West Coast of Ireland – John holds Irish citizenship since his grandfather was born in Cork – and Sarasota, FL and have a home in Needham, MA, Quechee still is top in John and Agnes’ hearts. “We’ve pretty much covered all the counties in Vermont,” John says, “but I like to stay right here.”

“We’ve had time,” Agnes says of what Quechee means to her family, “That’s what I’ve loved.”

“We just enjoyed everything that happened. We’ve led a happy life.” Today John still looks forward to the drive up to Quechee: “I know I’m going to have a wonderful time.”

Quechee resident Terry Dorman was undoubtedly an environmental steward before he knew it. When he was a young boy of perhaps nine or ten, for example, he often grabbed his fishing rod and left his Massachusetts home along with his dog to walk a mile through the woods to Four Mile Pond, spring fed and about 100 feet deep in the middle.

This would be the beginning of his long devotion to and protection of the natural environment that he came to love. Even when he was three years old, he followed his father into the woods and, after getting lost, waited for him sitting on a stump. Over the years, he returned to those woods regularly where he and his father cut firewood, built roads, hauled out a few saw logs and burned lots of brush.

The house where he lived with his family was surrounded by apple trees, and Dorman remembers the “big, old trunks and the gnarly apples.” His father had a large garden, and Dorman became responsible, as a young lad, to pull the weeds and haul the rocks from their vegetable garden. He brought peas to his mother (who, at age 100, is still living at their Boxford home) and planted trees with his father who taught him the love of the forest and vegetable garden.

Dorman brought that experience and passion to Vermont in 1980 and acquired his land on Wheelock Road eight years later. It is now known as Whitman Brook. At the time, it was to be a waystation while he and his wife, Sara, searched for a larger and more rural parcel.

“Quechee was at first just an outpost to work from transitionally while I found a farm,” said Dorman, looking out at the brook that runs along the back of his house. “But it became so much more. Our approach to landscaping, design and stewardship is largely through visual observation of the natural world. Whitman Brook offers a breadth or terrain and environments. I never intended to live here, but it gave me the solitude of Vermont and the peace of winter.”

The couple called off the search in 2001, several days after the 9/11 attack. Their abutting neighbor to the north had listed their house, and they quickly signed a P&S, subject only to a formal inspection. The acquisition, although just an acre of land and a house they later demolished, changed the character of their property disproportionally. But it gave them a site for a guest cottage and was the keystone in visually tying their land with the orchard across the road.

“Whitman Brook became a gift of sorts,” said Dorman. “Not only could I conserve a farm, I was able to create one.”

The old Fells orchard gave him a start. Planted around 1920, it was abandoned in 1968 and had started to revert to forest by the time Dorman negotiated a lease with the Quechee Lakes Landowners Association in 1995. He has since tripled the size of the orchard with 520 trees and now grows 132 varieties of apples, many of which are hard-to-find heirlooms. Ninety of those are of bearing age, although this year will be a lighter harvest, Dorman said.

“Remember that many of our trees are standard rootstock, much bigger than the size grown in commercial orchards nowadays, so they are spaced farther apart and have the height, width and canopy of a shade tree, “evoking days gone by,” he explained.

The farm’s signature apples include Hewes, a very small crab apple that has a yellow-green skin covered with deep red later in the season, ripens in mid-September and, according to Dorman, is the best apple to make roasted applesauce; Cox’s Orange Pippin, a “magical apple,” Dorman said, and is considered England’s MacIntosh, highly regarded due to its full flavor and crisp texture; Karmijn de Sonnaville, an offspring of Cox that is complex for eating and “makes a terrific crisp,” Dorman noted; and the original strain of McIntosh, “a whole different apple, known for its tender white flesh that’s crisp, sweet and juicy.

The older varieties are bred for specific regions and uses and carry such romantic names as Calville Blanc, Stayman Winesap, Westfield Seek-No-Further, Hubbardston Nonesuch, and Belle De Boskoop. Dorman has purchased some trees from nurseries specializing in older varieties and others from farms in surrounding Upper Valley towns. He sprays minimally and uses sticky traps when possible.

To Dorman, the six-acre orchard is a special place, one that transports him back to the early 20th century when it was first planted.

“Who were those men who dug every hole by hand, watered the freshly planted whips every week for the first year?” Dorman asked. “What did they talk about? Calvin Coolidge was U.S. President, and my mother was a toddler.”

Dorman spent all winter pruning. On January 1, he hauled seven ladders into the northwest corners. For the rest of the day and the next 125 straight days, he pruned. With a full-time job as the founder of Dorman & Fawcett that advises businesses across the US and UK, that meant starting in the evening with a fistful of AAA batteries and a headlamp. As the days grew longer and warmer, the headlamp was used less, and Dorman watched the valley come back to life. Then, at the end of April, standing on top of Row 1 in the Wheelock orchard, he could look back over his entire winter.

Dorman’s holdings approximate 200 contiguous acres, and he is actively seeking to expand wherever possible. He has purchased the Clark Hillcrest barn and field that abuts the southwest boundary of his property that will allow him to make it part of his walking trail network. The field will be left open for agricultural and open space purposes only.

“The barn will remain, and we will add a greenhouse and hoop-house east of it,” said Dorman. “Any landscaping and planting will be carried out in the tradition of old Vermont, consistent with the materials and workmanship used at our main house and cottage on Wheelock Road.”

Whitman Brook also includes a wildlife parcel that is part of the QLLA greenbelt. Dorman has an agreement with QLLA to manage the parcel.

“Our master plan includes the restoration of approximately 25 acres of fields and a primary agricultural/forestry travel way,” said Dorman. “An extensive network of walking trails is contemplated for the adjacent parcels now owned or expected to be acquired.”

With no heirs (his wife, Sara, passed away in 2017) and mindful of the loss of his family property in Massachusetts, Dorman’s life’s work is dedicated to de-subdivision and the gifting of the resulting house, gardens and land to conservation or the public.

Ever the environmental steward, aware and knowledgeable of the world around him and making sure he does as little as possible to negatively impact it, Dorman has worked on a day-to-day basis for the last thirty years to ensure sustainability in this increasingly industrialized world, using what his father taught him so long ago as a boy in the woods by the house in which he grew up.

“This is a magical place, and no one ever knew,” he reflected as he looked at his east orchard that sits above the upper valley underneath the hills of New Hampshire. “Growing up on an old farm and acreage that we eventually could not hold on to, I saw what was lost. Coming to Vermont was a way to turn back the clock and bring that back, to live more simply and be closer to the land.”

Dorman’s goal in restoring the orchard is to make more varieties of apples available to consumers and to donate any excess harvest to local food shelves. The orchard has been open to the pubic since 2010. Hours are Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It lies half a mile up Wheelock Road in Quechee on the right. The orchard will be open until early November.