By Ben and Erica Falk
I passed Warren Village and within a minute got jammed up in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Finally, after about 30 minutes, I made it to the third new parking lot built in the past few years for falls access. I then waited for a half dozen cars to pull out of the lot. I snuck into a spot, paid my $15 entrance fee, showed the attendant that I didn’t have any alcohol in my bag and got on the paved trail to the falls. The place was packed. Lifeguards weren’t letting anyone else in the water because it was so full and they were still clearing out medics from an accident that had occurred an hour earlier. So I waited in line at the fence around the lowest swimming hole. ...
Fortunately, this was a nightmare. The present-day reality, however, is that we still have the power to protect what is unique and wild about Warren Falls (and many other places in this Valley) amid a planning process which has created the same scenes in the nightmare above in other locations. As is the case with so many complex challenges, we are wrestling with many possible answers to misguided questions. Instead of asking “How do we achieve higher levels of access to this place as a tourist attraction?” we could be asking “How can we protect the unique beauty that is Warren Falls? How do we respect the wildness of this place?
If our priority is to be stewards of a special place and protect it, we wouldn’t have allowed the bulldozing of a mature forest to become additional parking in the first place. And our “solutions” would not so quickly revert to seeking yet more access to the falls. The falls don’t ask anything of us. We are the problem. Access is the problem. Tourism is the problem. When did access to the falls by people become the default priority? When was that decision made, by whom and how? This is a pressing question overarching all aspects of places like the Mad River Valley. If we, the residents of this Valley, aren’t going to protect one of the most beautiful, intact and wild places in our home, who will?
Amazingly, this problem was actually largely created by Valley-based planning processes, spending a lot of public money and bulldozing mature public forest. Warren Falls has been relatively steady in popularity for the 17 years I’ve been going there. Only after additional parking was made and signage installed did the popularity of it soar. Simply making easier or safer access to wild places is often a cause of additional problems, not a cure. Here are some points to consider if we want to prioritize protecting aspects of this Valley that keep it healthy and whole:
– Natural places have an inherent capacity that often cannot be expanded. More visitors are not always a good thing and at some point lead to the destruction of the very thing people are attracted to. This can be seen in thousands of once intact places across this country.
– We can’t solve every problem with another parking lot, sign or regulation and spending money on a problem sometimes makes it worse.
– Drawing more tourists to an attraction can actually be counterproductive to all involved and oftentimes leads to the destruction of the place people once loved.
–“Organically self-limiting systems” (such as lower visitors to a place which is harder to access or find parking at) is often the most successful way to keep it in the condition for which it is so loved to begin with.
– There’s a balance between natural settings, risk, beauty and regulation and some of the last best places are this way simply to the extent they’ve been left alone.
– It is possible to come up with brilliant answers to the wrong questions.
What’s happening at Warren Falls is emblematic of a larger process underway in The Valley at large and can be seen in the issues of the covered bridge, new town office, village planning and more. We can wake up to some common sense here or let planned suburbia make yet another place safe, generic, unaffordable, ugly and broken. If destruction of place or erosion of traditional lifeways are outcomes of any answer, then we need to rethink our questions.
Ben and Erica Falk live in Moretown.
