Vermont’s Green Up Day is always an amazing demonstration of shared community values and goals. It’s an amazing citizen-led effort to green up the Green Mountain state and it’s one of the best rites of spring to be found.
In our community on Green Up Day, the first-ever Green Valley Rally was held on Green Up Day, May 6. This event provided a central gathering and rallying point for those who were greening up, but it also did much more than that.
It solidified work that’s been underway for a while here in The Valley to increase our awareness, understanding and stewardship of all of our shared resources. Part of that work is to understand our impacts on our environment and how we use it and take care of it.
What that work (and the first Green Valley Rally) reveals is that everyone of our efforts and everyone of our volunteer-based community organizations shares the same values -- to protect the environment, to take care of our resources, to live harmoniously here with wildlife, to protect our river and our streams and to foster robust recreational opportunities suitable for everyone.
This is work that harkens back to local efforts of citizens of multiple towns to work together that predates many of our current and historical efforts. It goes back the creation of the tri-town Mad River Valley Planning District, Friends of the Mad River, the creation of the tri-town Mad River Valley Recreation District, the development of the Mad River Riders, the Mad River Trails Collaborative, stewardMRV, the Mad River Bear Initiative and others. It’s a linear progression of communities working together towards shared values and goals.
This evolution, this collaboration and cooperation among community members and groups demonstrates, once again, that we always have more in common than we don’t. When we work together on shared values and goals, we are strengthening our ties to each other and this Valley where we live and work. That has value that cannot be quantified.
Congrats to organizers and all who participated and volunteered in the first Green Rally Valley. Next year will be even better.
