With the arrival of summer, a familiar migration begins.
A handful of Dartmouth student-athletes leave Hanover for Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Skiers arrive for months of dryland training; rowers come to spend long mornings on the water. They are joined by dozens of student-athletes from colleges across New England and around the country, all drawn to the same quiet corner just south of the Canadian border. For the summer, they live together, eat together and train together. Rivalries that defined the winter give way to shared meals, shared roads and shared miles.
A summer morning at Craftsbury Outdoor Center begins with movement. Rowing shells glide across Hosmer Pond as the mist begins to lift. Cyclists disappear onto the dirt roads of Orleans County. Rollerskiers circle the Center’s paved loop before heading onto winding backroads. Members of the Green Racing Project, the Center’s professional, year-round training program for elite endurance athletes — Olympians, national champions and athletes chasing international competition — head out alongside college athletes beginning another day of training.
As a participant in this migration, I quickly realized it is surprisingly difficult to spend much time alone at Craftsbury. Walk into the kitchen, the dorm common room or onto the Center’s porches or docks and someone is almost always there. Skiers are still finishing breakfast as rowers, already halfway out the door, stop to fill their water bottles. A runner heads for the singletrack while another athlete walks toward the weight room.
Conversations that began over oatmeal continue as dishes are washed. By my second week, I knew the names of the people working in the kitchen. Athletes could easily spend the summer exchanging trays and pleasantries across the serving line with the kitchen staff. Instead, we stop, talk and get to know one another.
On Thursday afternoons, training for the Bill Koch Youth Ski League takes place just as adults gather for fitness classes. The young skiers come from the village of Craftsbury Common, from Montpelier and from towns stretching north toward the Canadian border. The field and rollerski loop fills with elementary-school children learning balance and confidence. In the gym nearby, adults work through their own exercises. Then, while parents finish their workout, the younger skiers scatter across the Center. Some head for the raspberry bushes. Others race around the field or the rollerski loop until it’s time to go home.
College athletes split their days between training, coaching and working around the Center. A skier who spent the morning doing intervals is now jogging beside an eight-year-old, demonstrating a drill or adjusting a pole strap. Others trade rollerskis for mountain bikes, leading children through the woods and reminding them to look ahead instead of down.
It doesn’t take long for the younger skiers to begin recognizing us. Whenever they see us training, they run over. “Can I ski with you?” they ask, and we say, “Of course.” They ask if we’ll race them. They ask if we’ll help them become skiers like us.
After a hard speed session, it becomes difficult to stay preoccupied with splits and heart-rate zones when one young biker insists on showing me the hill she’s finally climbed and another young skier wants to tell me how he finally made it around the rollerski loop.
Over time, you begin noticing how often Dartmouth appears throughout the Center. I first noticed it at dinner, when someone mentioned an assistant coach’s name and someone else at the table said, “Wait, he went to Dartmouth too?”
Some Dartmouth athletes return after graduation to race professionally with the Green Racing Project. Others come back to coach and work. Among the Dartmouth graduates helping make Craftsbury run are multi-time Olympian Susan Dunklee ’08, who coaches the next generation of biathletes, and facilities engineer Lucas Schultz ’09. The road from Hanover to Craftsbury has become well-traveled, not because anyone necessarily planned it that way, but because some places have a way of calling people back.
The sense of community extends beyond training. On the Fourth of July, the entire Outdoor Center gathered on the Craftsbury Common with the people of Craftsbury for a block party. At one point, several of the college women danced in a circle with a group of Bill Koch League girls, none tall enough to reach their shoulders. One Thursday evening, while a mom races, I’ll watch her ten-month-old son.
As August approaches, the college athletes will return to Hanover. The Green Racing Project will remain. The Bill Koch League will transition to its fall programs. Community rowing nights will continue on Hosmer Pond. On the remaining warm summer evenings, after the last boats have been carried back into the boathouse and the porch has emptied, the loons will still call across the water.
Soon we will once again fill classrooms, laboratories, libraries and athletic fields. We’ll return stronger, fitter and ready for another year. I hope we also return carrying something less visible: the habit of learning the names of the people whose work often goes unnoticed and the instinct to make room for someone younger — to say, “Of course,” when a child asks, “Can I ski with you?”
Although none of those lessons appear on a training schedule or syllabus, they may be the most important things we carry back to Hanover.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
