Lake Unlocked

Dartmouth alumni and faculty write so many books about Vermont that one wonders why Meldrim Thomson, Governor of New Hampshire, doesn't send the National Guard to investigate. In recent years Allen Foley '20 has captured Vermont humor; Frank Smallwood '51 has recounted his term in the state senate in the best book yet written about politics in the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier; Robert Pike '25 has portrayed the Upper Valley in Drama On The Connecticut; Edward C. Lathem '51 won two awards for his edition of Calvin Coolidge's letters to his father in Plymouth Notch, and Professor Noel Perrin has evoked country chores and weather around his home in Thetford in sparkling essays.

But the Dartmouth author who excels beyond all others in depicting Vermont as a special environment with a distinctive history is Ralph Nading Hill '39 of Burlington. Lake Champlain:Key To Liberty is his 12th book and clearly a culmination of his travels on the lake and along its shores and also of his broad reading of its history. This may well have been his most difficult book to write simply because he knows his subject thoroughly and cares about its heritage and its future. Its focus also must have presented problems: The Champlain Valley is slightly larger in square miles than the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the lake itself spreads into Vermont, New York, and Canada. It is the largest body of fresh water in the United States except for the Great Lakes, and historically its military campaigns and timber trade have been tied into the water systems of the St. Lawrence and Hudson Rivers. But Hill deftly keeps his voyage moving smoothly on the waters of the lake he loves.

In this voyage through history he has a dramatic story to tell. "Lake Champlain," he says, "is the most historic body of water in the Western Hemisphere: a silver dagger from Canada to the heartland of the American colonies that forged the destiny of France and England in America, and of the United States." He recounts it all - from geologic formation and the prehistory of native Americans through the crucial naval battles of the Revolution and the War of 1812 to present efforts to preserve the lake's environmental quality. Less than half a million people live in the Champlain Valley today - a statistic that caused Lyndon Johnson to quip to Vermont Senator George Aiken, while flying over the lake in 1966, that the region would really hum if Texas had it. Hill shares a belief widespread in the valley that growth and aesthetics can be harmonized. "The glory of Lake Champlain," he states, "is not that it has changed but that it has remained largely the same."

Some may quibble that this book views Lake Champlain from the Vermont side of the lake. Vermonters might retort by saying there is no better place for looking at the world. But for readers who want additional views of the Champlain Valley we can recommend two other books by Dartmouth authors. One is TheSticks, by Burton Bernstein '53, a portrait of New York's Essex County on the lake's western shore. The other is Canada and the AmericanPresence, by John Sloan Dickey '29 and Whitney Shepardson, because it explains how Canadians cluster next to the international border which crosses Lake Champlain at its northern end. As the lake spreads into three jurisdictions, so these books give perspectives on it. The story is fascinating, and all the authors tell it well.

But start with Ralph Nading Hill. By the time you finish the next two books we may have another Dartmouth author to recommend. H. Nicholas Muller III '60, who teaches Vermont history at the University of Vermont and contributes a foreword to Lake Champlain: Key toLiberty, has a 500-page chronology of Vermont's history in preparation. The Dartmouth- Vermont connection continues to flourish.

LAKE CHAMP LAIN:KEY TO LIBERTYBy Ralph Nading Hill ’39Countryman, 1977. 296 pp. $14.95

Mr. Morrissey is a writer and oral history consultantbased in Montpelier. His Vermont: A Bicentennial History, due soon from W. W.Norton, will add to the Dartmouth-Vermontconnection he describes.