Untamed Vermont

Vermont is generally thought of as quintessentially old New England: small villages with white clapboard houses and tall church spires; family farms with red barns and grazing cows; and verdant fields lined with maple and white birch trees. But there's another Vermont - virtually unknown to many - that is composed of untamed wilderness with an extraordinary variety of landscape, soils, trees, and wildflowers, in a variety perhaps unmatched in any other small region. These wild areas are among the state's most beautiful and photogenic. Some are protected permanently, but many are not. Some are difficult to reach, even on foot; others are just a short stroll from a town or roadside. A. Blake Gardner has been trekking to wild areas throughout Vermont for more than a decade, and he photographs them, carefully and lovingly, with his large-format camera. To supplement Gardner's exquisite portraits, Tom Wessels writes about how these wild areas came to be. He looks at the state's geology, its natural history, and its culture. And he scrutinizes the threats to that diversity and discusses its preservation and stewardship. Untamed Vermont serves as a pictorial reminder of the natural and fragile beauty of the wild areas within the Green Mountains, and how vital to our well-being the preservation of that wildness is.

Tom Wessels was the founding director of the Conservation Biology Program at Antioch New England Graduate School.