Op-Ed: Love letter to the Worcester Range and all Vermont wildlands

May 8, 2025  |  By Dunja (Shivani) Moeller

When I lived with my young daughter in Boston, one of our favorite family outings was to camp in the Vermont woods. We would drive north, find a spacious meadow somewhere in the forest, and set up a tent. No one ever bothered us. My daughter climbed on the large quartz boulders at rest since the last ice age, glittering their mica smiles in the sunshine. We sat for hours in the clear streams, watching river otter families amicably allow for our company. 

I moved to Vermont 10 years ago — right at the foot of the Worcester Range — and I still find deep woods, clear water, and quiet places to be the essence of our state. Many of my relatives and friends, when ill, either physically or in soul, have turned to wild forests to find sustenance and well-being. As a breath therapist, I use Vermont’s natural world as a space to show folks how to use breath as a therapeutic tool for restoration and healing. 

Like many other Worcester Range residents, I was shocked in early 2024 when the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources released a draft “Management Plan” for the Worcester Range that put half of its nearly 19,000 acres of public land on the chopping block for future logging. Despite packed public meetings and widespread concern, the final plan, released on Sept. 26 of last year, retained the same backwards approach as the earlier draft — opening up about half the Worcester Range Management Unit to future logging, including most of its mature, highly productive lower-elevation forests. 

I am also filled with hope for the public lands just steps from my back door. The bill H.276, an act relating to the designation of state wildlands, was introduced in February and the House Environment Committee has been taking testimony. It will protect core state lands like the Worcester Range. The Wildlands Act recognizes that Vermont forests are just beginning to recover from past misuse, and that state lands like the Worcester Range — where, by a process of benign neglect, much of the public land has been undisturbed for over a century — offer many of the best opportunities to recover old forests across our landscape. 

As I consider the fate of my local forests, I recall my early days as an anthropologist, when a Hopi elder taught me: “When you are out there on the land, everything is watching you, you are being watched and all the animals and spirits know exactly what you are up to, so make no mistake, you are never alone.” I never forget the words of this old friend when I hike the Skyline trail along the spine of the Worcester Range, tracing the uninterrupted wildlife corridor that stretches nearly 20 miles from White Rock to Elmore. 

When I walk in the Worcester Range, I feel the sacred land beneath my feet, responding to the placement of each step. Mosses and lichens covering the trail and boulders make it seem as though I walk in a soundproof studio. I sneak up on croaking frogs without stifling their songs. On a silent hike up Worcester Mountain, chickadees landed on my shoulders and head, as if wanting to nest there. I think of all these beings when I think of the Vermont Wildlands Act and the future of the Worcester Range — what do they think when they watch us, how do they want us to treat their home? 

As a breath therapist and anthropologist taking a bird’s eye view of Earth, it is clear how essential the Vermont Wildlands Act is. My friends in the Amazon and the boreal forests in Canada remind me that we are falling headlong into dire climate and biodiversity crises. Here in New England, numerous state agencies, academics and forest-industry organizations all agree that we need to expand wildlands to cover at least 10% of the landscape. The Vermont Wildlands Act would be a modest step to that end, bumping the proportion of protected Vermont land to let old forests recover from 4% to 7%. 

Every time I walk in the Worcester Range, I renew my pledge to the preservation of public wildlands and the spirits and species living in them. I pledge to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to protect the trees, the air that they create, the medicines they give, and the wind that greets them.

Dunja C. Moeller Ph.D., is an anthropologist with research and clinical training in medical anthropology who has a therapeutic cathartic breathwork practice in Worcester.