Rethinking Beauty, Prioritizing Community
By Zoe Johnson ‘26
Arriving at a small park in the center of the central street of the small town of Cavendish, I started to grasp the unique community base of the small New England town. Our community partners, people who have been involved in organizing community members in town cleanups and flooding repair for years, had told us simply to “meet by the gazebo.” We had to find out ourselves exactly where that gazebo was. As it turned out, it was located on the Village Green, this block-sized greenspace in the center of town. As soon as everyone arrived, we strolled down the street to take a restroom break before heading out on our surveying trip. Expecting a porta-potty or something similar, I was surprised to be led into a closed cafe, full of renovation equipment and construction blankets covering the floors. No, none of our community partners owned the cafe. No, it didn’t belong to one of their spouses. They just knew the guy who owned the cafe and he’d not only agreed to let a dozen strangers use the bathroom when he was nowhere to be seen, but he had freely given out the door passcode to everyone.
The amount of trust this showed was incredible to me, and when a couple of us later got the chance to meet the man who owned the cafe, we learned how this kind of mutual trust has influenced the rebuilding of communities after severe flooding. He had housed several other community members in the aftermath of the July flood and knew everyone on his road. And it wasn’t just him who was pitching in. The whole community came together after the July flood to clean up the destruction, creating a party-like atmosphere with pizza provided by local restaurants, beer from the local brewery, and music blasting in the streets. Everyone knows which houses have the tubs of first aid and emergency supplies– chosen for their strategic location in case floodwaters washed out certain major roads. The flooding wreaked havoc financially and emotionally through enormous property damage, destruction of businesses and farms, and fear of increased flooding in the future, and the response to this turmoil was leaning on and helping one another.
But it’s an all too familiar reality that this flooding was not an isolated incident. The effects of climate change loom over the community of Cavendish, promising even more flooding in future years. The increased concern about when and where the next flood may strike has left the community to consider its options, bringing up questions about when it’s time to relocate families rather than continue to rebuild and try to prevent the ultimately inevitable. In such a tight-knit community, that’s a tough reality to consider.
These hard questions have led some community members to take a good look at the current flood-prevention infrastructure, and how it can be changed to better serve their community. Part of this effort includes improving and maintaining the current ditches and culverts that divert water away from houses and roads. I have been lucky enough to contribute to this process and witness first-hand how much some Cavenshish community members care about protecting their town and one another, volunteering their time to come out and clear out overgrown ditches together.
Some community members, however, have emphasized that we need to be reevaluating more than just our ditches and culverts. Kelly Stettner, the founder of the grassroots watershed organization the Black River Action Team, mentioned that to really make our communities sustainable and resilient in the long term, we need to “rethink beauty.” We need to reframe what we see as beautiful and valuable, prioritizing infrastructure, homes, and landscaping that promote flood resiliency and community well-being. Large manicured lawns, for instance, have long been considered beautiful, but they provide little benefit in terms of flood resilience in comparison to more natural riparian vegetation. We need to redefine what is beautiful and valuable to include what benefits the vitality and longevity of the community itself.
Something as large-scale as rethinking what is beautiful and valuable is inherently a social and community-based issue. Reframing priorities takes time and community involvement, and is by no means easy. But in a place with such strong community ties, the beauty and value of community are evident and clearly worth prioritizing.
