SALISBURY — The celebration was brief, just long enough for a congratulatory hug and a handful of photos before the winter wind could blow them off the mountaintop.
Instead of champagne, Joel Blumert and his hiking companions feted Jan. 1 with Entenmann’s doughnuts. And it wasn’t the new year they were toasting, but Blumert’s 1,000th ascent of the state’s tallest peak.
The 76-year-old Salisbury resident has been hiking Bear Mountain twice a week, with only sporadic lapses, for nearly a dozen years. On New Year’s Day, Blumert reached the goal he set a few years ago of 1,000 climbs.
He has hiked it in the wintry cold and the summer heat, amid the splendor of the autumn foliage and even in the middle of a daunting tornado.
Joel Blumert, right, followed by Trish Walter, of Collinsville, and Linda Huebner of Halifax, Vt., climb the ridge leading to the summit of Bear Mountain on New Year’s Day. Photo by Steve Barlow
“It’s just been one step at a time and one climb at a time,” said Blumert, a musician who performs mostly at area nursing homes.
Blumert and his wife, Theresa Carroll, moved to Sharon in 1985 and to Salisbury in 1987, in part for the outdoor recreation the Tri-State region offers. But after their two daughters, Shayna and Denali, were born in the 1990s, Blumert’s exercise regimen started to lag.
In 2000, his doctor reported he had “ridiculously high blood pressure.”
“I decided if I was going to die of a stroke, it was better to die in the woods than sitting around the house,” Blumert said.
He began hiking again and rebuilt his endurance. In March 2014, he summited Bear Mountain, which at 2,316 feet is the highest peak in Connecticut. (The state’s highest point at 2,380 feet lies on the south slope of Mount Frissell at the border with Massachusetts.)
It was Blumert’s first hike up Bear in several years. As he gazed at the Twin Lakes shimmering below, he said to himself, “I love this mountain. I’m going to do this once a week.”
He grew to love the hike so much that after a year he doubled it to twice a week. Since then, Blumert has stuck to his weekly ritual with only occasional pauses for out-of-state trips or illness, along with one 13-week stretch when a pulled ligament in his pelvis planted him on the couch.
He knows the 2.9-mile route intimately, from the Undermountain trailhead off Route 41 to the intersection with the Appalachian Trail and on to the summit. In his sojourns, he has seen porcupines, deer, a timber rattler, a pair of copulating copperheads (“Or maybe they were milk snakes; I didn’t interrupt them to find out”), owls and redtail hawks — yet not a single bear.
Soon after he began hiking Bear regularly, Blumert made another vow: He would be cheerful and friendly to every hiker he met on the mountain. “I’ve developed trail friendships with 20 to 30 people,” he said.
One of them is Collinsville resident Trish Walter, who became a regular hiking buddy and has now climbed the mountain with Blumert about 70 times over the past five years.
Walter and her friend, Linda Huebner, of Halifax, Vermont, joined Blumert for his milestone hike on New Year’s Day. With 4 inches of snow having fallen the night before, they set foot shortly after noon and reached the top just before 3 p.m. The trek back down took half that time.
Aside from the blustery wind approaching the summit, they enjoyed a spectacular day of bright sunshine and blue skies.
The weather hasn’t always been so cooperative. Blumert was once nearly struck by lightning on the upper ridge. And this September, he hiked down in what he described as a tornado.
“It came right down Undermountain Trail,” he noted. “Trees were swishing back and forth. Branches were flying everywhere. There was grape-sized hail. It was scary.”
Now that he has reached his goal, Blumert plans to cut back to one hike of Bear each week. That will free time for other climbs in the area, a recumbent bicycle he has bought, and yet another mountaineering goal.
“I want to complete the 4,000-footers in New Hampshire,” Blumert said. “There are 48 of them, and I’ve done 23.”
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John Carter
Carter arrived at his calling by a circuitous route. After graduating from Yale, he joined the Peace Corps, then returned to his hometown of Milton, Mass., where he founded and ran the Carter Tree Co. for seven years. After closing the business, he attended Virginia Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity. During that time, he and his wife, Deborah, were involved in the hunger movement. Carter said every venture he undertook was made possible by Deborah, whom he described as his constant companion and indispensable partner in his pursuit of compassion and justice. Still, he questioned himself: “Who am I, and what should I be doing that I’m passionate about?”
John Carter and his wife DeborahPhoto by Deborah Carter
In the face of new challenges, volunteers joined the effort to revive the original program, VS1. The Rev. Heidi Truax, recently retired rector of Trinity Lime Rock, has been a strong supporter of Vecinos Seguros from its inception. Glenn Formica, an immigration attorney from New Haven, gave a presentation informing the community about the second Trump administration’s amended policies. Formica also generated written materials in English and Spanish, advising private citizens and employers how to prepare in the event of a visit from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). William Tong, Connecticut’s attorney general, a proponent of many social justice issues, including the opioid crisis and fair pricing for generic drugs, has also provided support since the establishment of Vecinos Seguros.
The VS2 steering committee, which includes Carter, is led by Jill Drew, a local civic leader. Drew has worked with Judiciary Committee co-chairmen Gary Winfield and Steven Stafstrom in support of SB 91, a proposal by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont to limit ICE actions in “protected areas,” including schools, hospitals and religious buildings. She has also supported HB 5499, which would place limits on the use of automated license plate readers, addressing concerns that the Trust Act is being circumvented through technology deployed for other purposes. Other committee members include Amy Lake and Lee and Sophia DeBoer.
VS2 has launches a range of initiatives, including distributing “know your rights” flyers; creating an online resource with local legal and social services for immigrants; hosting in-person events to educate neighbors and train volunteers; organizing a rapid response team to verify reported immigration enforcement activity and support those affected; providing financial assistance for legal expenses, rent and utilities; and advising employers — from farms and restaurants to stores and private homes — on how to protect workers if immigration agents arrive.
As the annual report states: “We are committed to building on the powerful work of Rev. Carter, who, in the first seven years of Vecinos Seguros, assisted a significant number of individuals and families. It is our mission to continue this important work.”
Few descriptions capture the moment more clearly than Carter’s own words:
“The human cost of current ICE practices is appallingly high. Evidence of the brutality and cruelty of these practices is everywhere. Minneapolis is a recent and egregious example. ICE enforcement is doing much more than deporting individuals. It is also the systematic destruction of families. According to some reports, 90% of deportees are male. They are husbands, partners and fathers, often the primary contributors to family finances. There is heartbreak, trauma and stress experienced by the families left behind. The humanitarian response to the violence and chaos in Minneapolis is inspirational and instructive. Both citizens and immigrants came to the aid of residents living in fear and peril. It should be noted that people of color, whether their status was legal or undocumented, were also deeply shaken by what they witnessed in their communities.”
Carter also described how communities responded. That out of devastation, he said, came something else:
“A new word was born out of the compassionate response in Minneapolis: ‘neighboring.’ In caring for each other, they were ‘neighboring.’ The mission of Vecinos Seguros 2 is to ‘neighbor’ members of the immigrant community whose lives have been turned upside down by current immigration policies.”
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