Peter Blodgutt, Adventure Librarian
BY NOW, PETER BLODGETT '74 HAS FINISHED HIS 55-DAY CRUISE FROM CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, TO SRI LANKA AND MALAYSIA, THROUGH INDONESIA AND ON TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.
He is probably somewhere in New Zealand, figuring out a) how to stay in that country for several more, months in an interesting way or b) how he can work in a side trip, for not much money, to Antarctica.
He is more than an expert on inexpensive travel. He is also an expert on choices. Peter Blodgett is the town librarian in Thetford, Vermont. He holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and two master's. He. makes a modest "salary, is unmarried, owns no property, and has no pension plan, no 401 (k). Ask him what's important in life, and one of his answers will be, "We all seek power to gain control and security in our lives.; What gives power? For most people, it's money, influence. But what about freedom freedom to study, to learn, to travel? For me, power is knowledge. Time is my currency."
Fie lives just a few milesfrom where he grew up, in the rented upstairs of an old house that was once a dormitory for Thetford Academy. Fields stretch back from the house., to the base of a long, wooded ridge: Most mornings he walks' or runs to work, and on good days in the winter he skis. He makes an annual fall trip to the: Dartmouth Grant, has, paddled the Moise River in Quebec, Maine's Allagash River and West Branch of the Penobscot, and the Connecticut River from the Canadian border to Long Island Sound, He has traveled across;-the United States, through parts of Russia and Japan, and trekked in Iceland. He prefers to dwell, as much as possible, in two places; in the country out o,' doors, and in what he calls the "high country of the mind." And so, hayingarranged a leave of absence from his library work, having no strings tying him down, he is spending a year to expandhis intellectual geography, to explore of the world that he's never known.
IF THERE'S SUCH A THING AS a true calling, Peter Blodgett first heard his at Dartmouth, in two separate experiences that would eventually define the choices in his life. The first came, when he traveled to Africa as a freshman. The second came when he began working in Dartmouth's libraries. "I remember dusting the books in the vaults of the rare books library." he says. "An original Don Quixote, Theodore Roosevelt's manuscripts,... I could almost feel the history seeping into my fingertips. I decided one of my goals would be to try. and convey that feeling of history and discovery/'
After Dartmouth, Petef spent a "wonderfully rich' year in Boston, working on an inventory at the library of the Boston Athenaeum. But he soon moved back upcountry, drawn to the landscape of his youth. He taught high school students at the newly alternative Vershire School in Vershire, Vermont, apprenticed as a carpenter under Willem Lange, completed a MALS program at Dartmouth, returned to teaching at Thetford Academy. But he grew to mistrust the educational system he was part of, felt as if his time governed by bells he was teaching inside a prison. He returned to carpentry, spent time traveling, and volunteered at Thetford's small town library. When the library director's position became available, he applied; and was hired. "They; were paying so poorly they couldn't attract any truly qualified people," he says. Over the next five years, the library paid Peter's Way through a master's in library science at Simmbns College, one class at a time. And in his work in the public library, Peter found the balance that he had been pointing toward since Dartmouth.
"I am in a perfect position now," he says. "'I like one-on-one teaching. I love to help people who are sincerely seeking an answer. I feel like a wizard at the gates of information. The librarian's role is to defend the public's access to the gates in a sense, to defend democracy. I like the public part. I see a much broader spectrum of society than I would at a university or research library. One day I might get someone wanting to know how to patent a new trap that traps .beavers live. The next day a firstgrader might ask me, 'What does a woolly beat caterpillar turn into?'"
Of the two library buildings in town, Peter likes the older one, six miles down the road from his house, in the tiny village of Post Mills. The Greek Revival building and its original collection were financed by-the great nineteenth-century banker and philanthropist George Peabody, who spent a summer in Post Mills as a young boy. It is the oldest library a; Vermont and the smallest of Peabody's many gifts. It has neither, toilet nor running water. But a balcony wraps around the single open room , and the air smells of wood and leather, dust and history. Above a glass case of stuffed birds and small mammals-perches a mounted owl Peter has named Athena, after the goddess of wisdom. On: the wooden desk where he works, a stack of bookmarks displays a picture of the Peabody Library and a quote from its keeper: "In a; culture where the. notion of sacred is too often constrained by doctrine and dogma, the library truly is a sacred space. This the temple of thought wherein grey-eyed Athena reigns and all ideas are made welcome. ' We should all choose a? well as Peter Blodgett: Fmd asacred space. Know when to from it.
He travels at altitude: the country out o' doors, and the high country of the mind.
BLODGETT'SADVENTURETIPS 1. Keep your life's overhead low so you can afford adventures. If you need a car, buy a used one at least a decade old; it can't really depreciate. Give old books as gifts. Rent your home. Minimize debt. 2. Encourage your travel agent to dream aloud with you. Did you know you can sail across the Atlantic in elegant comfort for $120 a day ? Ride submarines in Hawaii? Bathe on a thermally heated beach in Antarctica? 3. Take strong, versatile, natural-fiber clothing and let it air dry. Clothes last three times longer when they are not beaten up and scorched once a week. I met one retired couple who wear only silk clothes when they travel. They can be hand washed, dry quickly, look stunning, and can be stuffed (with a small traveling iron) into a small knapsack. —Peter Blodgett '74
JIM COLLINS is a contributing editor to this magazine
