Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP

Shortly after we arrived at BSU, a retirement gave me an opportunity to teach a course about Land Protection, while two outside events helped to shape the way I would teach it for the next two decades (and beyond). One was the publication of Thoreau's Country and the other was the establishment of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. 

The namesakes of the park, courtesy of 
NPS Lego Vignettes

Each of these has shaped what we do in class, but more importantly they have given us places to go for the exploration of the interactions among forest ecology, land protection, and conservation. These are the aforementioned National Park in Vermont and Harvard University's research forest in central Massachusetts.

In the early years of teaching the course, I was fortunate to have the direct involvement of a local expert at each site -- seasonal ranger Scott Davison at Marsh-Billings and assistant director John O'Keefe at Harvard Forest. Each provided my students and me with a rich discussion of the inside and outside features of the respective properties -- combining the history of the site and the insights of forest ecology.

I highly recommend the Fisher Museum in Petersham and the mansion in Woodstock, as well as the extensive walking trails in each place. Trails that were provided for the enjoyment of visitors or the working of farms and forests are now available for learning the forests themselves. 

Although their histories are quite different, the two sites have a few things in common. Like most of New England, they were indigenous lands used for hunting and gathering before they were colonized by Europeans and became agricultural lands, the sources of firewood and pastures for grazing or over-grazing. Again like most of New England, these lands have been reforested, but unlike most of the secondary forest in the region, these have been managed and monitored for a century or more. 

The Fisher Museum web page now provides high-resolution images of its famous dioramas and information about very recent exhibits that honor indigenous stewardship of the land.  The National Park Service provides virtual access to much of the collection at Marsh-Billings via virtual exhibits.

To learn more about the Marsh-Billings property from afar, I recommend the very cursory encyclopedia article I wrote in 2000 and copied onto my website, as well as A Place in the Land, which is a bit more interesting than its trailer suggests. It provides glimpses of some of the amazing artworks that were collected by the families who lived there and that are essential parts of the story of conservation in the United States.

Lagniappe -- September 2024

Here I include a couple of related links I will be sharing with my Land Protection students, following our most recent visit to Marsh-Billings. 

Marsh Billings Rockefeller: Conservation on a Grand Scale is a 17-minute episode of the America's National Parks podcast that puts the park in a broad context. This context is what makes it important in my course!

The one thing I regret about our 2024 visit is that we did not have a chance to go inside the mansion. Among the treasures on the first floor are important paintings of the Hudson River School. Some of them are included in the MABI Flickr account, starting with this Bierstadt painting. His works and others of the Hudson River School were presented in Re/Framing, a traveling exhibit that was at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 2022.

On our way to Marsh-Billings, I asked students to share their favorite national parks -- either those visited or those they would like to visit. Not that they asked, but I have created a life-list of national parks and museums I have visited. I would like to visit all of the parks, of course, but I have included on the map just a couple of aspirations. 

I also mentioned the B.A.R.K. Ranger program, of which my crazy dog is a proud participant.

Podcasters Danielle and Cassie bring their love for the outdoors and their love for morbid stories together in a very engaging podcast that alternates between their own well-researched stories and outdoor experiences shared by their readers. 

Listen, learn, and watch your back!