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During a talk at Kent Town Hall on Thursday, Aug. 13, forester and author Ethan Tapper imparted a call to action for a better future for forests and humanity alike.
Alec Linden
“A really good love story,” Tapper said in the early stages of his hour-long speech, “isn’t like, two people meet and fall in love and everything is good forever, right?”
Instead, “they climb mountains and they cross rivers and they make compromises and sacrifices and they do things that they never thought they had to do — and I really feel like that’s what our ecosystems are asking from us right now.”
Tapper articulated his philosophy of land stewardship through his own complicated story, starting from his childhood in southern Vermont when he had no interest in forests at all, and wanted only one thing — “My passion was that I wanted to get out of there.”
Even today, in the wake of success from his 2024 book “How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending to a Changing World,” which won a New England Book Award for Nonfiction, Tapper struggles to pin down what exactly he is.
“I’m basically a forester from Vermont,” he said, “although now I kind of say I don’t know what I am.” Tapper also alluded to his position as a popular figure on social media platforms — “I call myself a digital storyteller, which is my attempt at a less gross way to say influencer.”
Despite the happy accidents of his life — he claimed the book was the unplanned result of six years of morning journaling — the story Tapper told Thursday evening was one of very deliberately building a home.
Tapper spent much of the talk describing his own home, which is a 175-acre mountainside tract of forest in Vermont he has come to call Bear Island since purchasing it nearly a decade ago. When he first saw it, he said, “everything was wrong.” There was trash everywhere, old half-buried logging equipment sticking out of the ground, rampant invasive plants and signs of deer overpopulation. Tapper said after an hour wandering the steep hillside, he “couldn’t find one healthy tree.”
He said the dire condition was due to poor logging practice in the area several decades earlier. Initially put off by the property, it eventually won him over after a pivotal moment standing on a log landing — a clearing used for timber storage — and looking at the ruined ecosystem around him.
He said the forest has improved greatly since then, and continues to every day. It didn’t do it by itself, though — Tapper had to intervene.
Ethan Tapper told Kent residents that loving a forest isn’t easy, but it’s certainly worth it.Provided
He said the methods he used to bring it back from the brink may seem counterintuitive to many, like cutting down thousands of unhealthy trees, which makes room for healthy ones to grow, or killing dozens of deer that eat native understory plants and young shrubs and trees. But making those decisions is what it means to truly love a forest, Tapper said.
Tapper accented the speech with passages from his upcoming book, “The Forest Year: Finding Hope in a World Worth Saving,” set to be published in October, that specifically related to birds.
“This seems to be an exceptionally birdy place,” he said early on. “Am I wrong?”
From the nods and murmurs of assent from the crowd, he assumed correctly. He also acknowledged the several bird conservation projects in town, such as an ongoing effort by the Kent Land Trust, the Marvelwood School, the Sharon Audubon Center and the Purple Martin Conservation Association to protect breeding populations of the eastern purple martin, which Tapper said was one of his favorite birds.
In one passage, Tapper compared the “winter birds” that spend the cold season in the Vermont woods to his community of friends that “have chosen to stay in this place and with each other.”
“We have chosen roots over wings,” he recited. “It’s a different kind of freedom.”
Following the reading, Tapper said that this type of freedom embodies “the act of stewardship,” in that it is deliberate, it’s not always easy, and it’s an ongoing process. Just as he built a home for himself at Bear Island, stewardship at both the personal and global scale is really about building a home that supports humans and the natural world alike.
“We’re all standing on that log landing,” he said.
The Cornwall Music Bowl hosted its fourth summer concert on Saturday, Aug. 15. Musicians like Wilder Huckleberry, Sheridan Tekosky, Don Bracken and Graham Corrigan, left to right, took the stage before main act Ruby Leftstep closed out the night.
Aly Morrissey
Directly behind the Market is a new stage so fresh you can still smell the saw cuts. In front of that stage sits an enthusiastic gathering of music fans on folding chairs and picnic benches, as well as on the grassy forum of the Music Bowl itself. It feels like a secret little community party, but everybody’s invited.
The idea for the Bowl came from Chris Sampson, a music industry veteran who worked on producing the Bonnaroo festivals with Superfly Entertainment. Now working at Spotify, Chris and his family moved to the area in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. When venues slowly started to reopen, Sampson grew frustrated with the trip down to New York City or over to New Haven just to see some of his favorite bands perform. So he resolved to bring them up to the Northwest Corner.
First, he built a little stage on his property in West Cornwall, where he invited friends to see live music in the woods. It went well, but the potential to share the musical magic was limited. Then, in 2025, Sampson teamed up with Will Schenk and Michael Cesari at the Cornwall Market.
When Schenk bought the Market, there was already a bowl shape that had been carved into the land. All they had to do was bring the music. Sampson and local musician Eddie Dahill of the band Ruby Leftstep started inviting local and city bands, including Matt Iwanusa of RIP Dunes. Iwanusa, who lives in Brooklyn, relishes the chance to come up to the Northwest Corner for a breath of our fresh air.
This summer, the team decided to get serious about the project, officially naming it the Cornwall Music Bowl and getting a big assist from Ronnie Lianza of Chimney Rock Construction, who donated the stage. This year marks the first full summer of programming, and the shows are free. The project is funded by private donations, as well as financial and space support from the Cornwall Market. While the Market itself is closed during the events, Cesari is enthusiastic about the robust drink offerings and fresh oysters they fly in from Maine.
While the summer programming will close at the end of September, the group is looking into ways to keep the party going by hosting off-season concerts, movies and maybe even other types of performances.
See the rest of the schedule, and keep up with the project at cornwallmarket.com/cornwall-music-bowl.
Aly Morrissey
Music industry veteran Chris Sampson, the mastermind behind the Cornwall Music Bowl, introduces main act Ruby Leftstep on Aug. 15.
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