MiddBrief

Author: Ian Trombulak

The College's weeklong Food Symposium kicked off on Oct. 20 in the Orchard at Hillcrest Environment House, where Professor of Environmental Studies John Elder gave a lecture about local food and its potential to help fight climate change.

Elder began the lecture discussing the beauty he found in the process of sugaring maple trees: how the sap is sucked up to the branches when it freezes at night, and then trickles down as it thaws during the day. He related this to the process sugar makers themselves go through, before going into the ways in which our increasingly warmer winters have hindered the production of sap and thrown a wrench in the system.

"As I became more aware of the impact of climate change on Vermont forests," he said, "it became hard for me to maintain this lyrical pitch … it sapped my confidence in the future."

He followed this with excerpts from his current writing project, which illustrated how he regained his confidence that the hard times we now face should not be met with more negativity, but rather community organization and celebration. He then related the local foods movement to Mardi Gras, saying that both help people through hard times: sugaring through the winter, and Mardi Gras as preparation for Lent.

"Celebration is a response to life's fragility and to the world's peril," he said, stating his belief that more positive feelings, such as delight in eating homegrown food, will be beneficial to the fight against climate change. "If you think of it as a party, there's no need to punch a time clock."