By BILL CHAISSON
When I was little kid, going for walks through the woods on Forbes Mountain in Danbury, I was fascinated by the stone walls, cellar holes, chimneys and cemeteries that showed me that people lived up there in the woods. Except that wasn’t quite right. By they time I was a teenager, I understood that there weren’t any trees on the landscape when those walls crossed it and when that cellar hole had a house over it.
When I was in my 30s I was introduced to the idea of the vernacular landscape. These are the spaces that are shaped by economic uses. The form of many buildings and other structures that populate the vernacular landscape are determined by their use, not membership in any aesthetic style.
I soon realized that the abandoned walls, holes, and chimneys that I found in the woods as a kids were vernacular landscapes that were in the process of reverting to a natural state. At some point in the distant future there may be no sign that people every lived and worked on Forbes Mountain.
Most of the landscape of New England was at some point put to some economic use and modified accordingly. Sometimes the uses were determined by the resources that were available on the site. Sawmills were built in places where a stream in the middle of a forest dropped quickly over a short distance. Sand pits were excavated where the last glacial advance left a glacial lake beach or a delta. Brickyards were built near the center of old glacial lakes where only clay collected when they froze over in the winter. Ports developed where the water is deep between protected headlands.
For thousands of years this was how the distribution, scale, and type of human settlement was determined. During those millennia we as a species used technology in order to make use of natural resources. Incrementally, technological advances allowed human populations to alter the landscape to suit their purposes.
Perhaps the easiest and one of the more ancient examples of this is the dam. We aren’t even the only dam builders; did beavers give Stone Age humans an idea? (There is a Eurasian species of beaver.)
When I walk my dog along Center Road in Unity I pass an old dam (see photo at right) on a tributary of the Little Sugar River that flows down toward Charlestown. There is vertical slot in it that perhaps once held a waterwheel. Perhaps not. If anyone knows the economic function of this relict vernacular landscape, I would be pleased to hear about it.
It seems unlikely that this use will ever we revived, whatever it was. But I’m told that the stonewalls of Unity used to keep sheep in. One of my neighbors still keeps sheep, but apparently it was a big business around here once. Hence the woolen mills of Newport and other smaller towns.
The advent of less expensive wool from places like the western U.S., Argentina and Australia ended the local wool-producing industry. But that was in an era of constantly improving long distance transportation and inexpensive fuel. That time is past.
One of the reasons for the revival of what people are calling sustainable farming is that more and more people are now willing to make the political decision to pay a little more for locally produced products.
But another reason is that the price difference is shrinking. The cost of transporting products long distances is rising, (so manufacture of heavy, durable items are “re-shoring”). The developing world is improving the standard of living of its citizens, raising the cost of production there.
Technological advances in the form of computerization and redesigned equipment is reducing the cost of some aspects of farming here. Agricultural research has never ceased; new farming techniques make possible what was once not feasible.
Some of the abandoned vernacular landscapes in this region could conceivably be revived and become working landscapes again. Some are. And some will remain picturesque ruins in the woods.
Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times.
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