Day 245: September 1st – Wilmington, VT

Sunny, warm, and calm

       What a difference a year makes!  We are in the town of Wilmington, Vermont this evening visiting an old college buddy.  It is basically one year since Mother Nature dealt a backhand to this community with torrential rains pounding the area and causing some of the worst flooding in the town’s history.  Wilmington is surrounded by mountains.  When it rains as much as it did last August, there is no place for the rain to go but down into the valley and into the little stream that flows through the town.  The channel is narrow and will therefore quickly fill and overflow its banks as Wilmington painfully knows from last year’s hurricane.

Photo from August 2012 from the web

Dot's Restaurant as of 9/1/12

       Last year, the waters inundated the town and left most businesses with damaged buildings filled with mud, debris, mold and irreplaceable monetary losses.  Today, a year later, many of those businesses are gone.  Many had no flood insurance and many could not keep their heads above water (no pun intended) long enough to recover any losses.  Hopefully, time will heal the wounds inflicted by Irene.  But for now, many of the businesses which drew folks into this resort community are gone and with it the throngs of visitors which would flock to the mountains of Vermont.

       As I walked down the main street of town this evening, it was sad to see Dot’s Resraurant which was a magnet for the Sunday morning breakfast crowd, now relocated backbehind its former foundation.  The building was actually cut in half and moved away from it’s original location until it can be reset on it’s new foundation.  The town’s people all joined together last year to help in the clean-up and restoration, but they could only do so much. 

        Now it’s a painfully slow process, but hopefully a steady one that will bring this community back to its original condition.  This blog tends to concentrate on the unrivalled beauty of nature, but we have to remember that she can be as ruthless and heartless as she is giving and benevolent.