A mentor once told me that there are times in our lives when we are the arrow, flying swift and far. As we get older, we’re more often the bow, holding steady and helping to launch others further than we can see or imagine.

The recent fire that damaged Notre Dame triggered an outpouring of French anguish over the near-destruction of a building they considered a part of France’s soul. That got me thinking about our buildings here in Vermont. And which buildings, if any, are so important they sum up our experience as a state and stand for what we consider ourselves to be?

Decades ago, my kindergarten class memorized Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening . I recall that we performed it several times, gap-toothed, cheerfully yelling the verses to general audience approval. The interesting thing is that the poem has stayed with me all these years, popping up at odd moments to warm my imagination.

For more than 20 years, April has been observed as National Poetry Month . It’s a time when poetry is shared across the country at readings and in workshops, on stage and in living rooms. When school children and adults are encouraged to read poetry, to memorize a favorite poem, or try their hand at writing one.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about France again – and not only because of the devastating Notre-Dame fire. News that the Vermont Senate had just given preliminary approval to a bill that would ban single-use plastic bags instantly carried me back to my earliest visit to France in the sixties, and the first time I saw people carrying purchases in string bags.

A friend of mine came across some old film recently showing street scenes of Rutland in 1941, and it’s a revealing trip back in time. The Rutland Lions Club made the film , which eventually came into the hands of the Rutland Historical Society.

I’d been living in California, where a phrase like “it’s freezing” merely meant a mad rush to get the warmest sweater possible. So when I told my friends I was moving to Vermont, they warned me it would be cold, really cold. I could handle “cold,” I told them.

Walkers came from around the state and stretched across age brackets: families with strollers, young children on bikes, teens, college students, partners, baby boomers, and an eighty-five-year-old from Windham County. I was one of them, joining both to speak out against business as usual and to grow a community with shared visions of sustaining life on this planet.

The impressive-looking flying buttresses of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris are still standing – now seen by many as symbols of strength and endurance. But at the Notre Dame they have no real structural function. Resembling earthbound wings, they’re strictly there for looks. And I should know, because I teach architectural history at Middlebury College.

A proposed new law with 60+ co-sponsors to address neonicitinoid pesticide use in Vermont has certainly struck an ecological nerve. Bill H-205 responds to the perils facing all pollinators these days, including stress, climate change, forage loss, narrowed genetic pool, pesticides, and pathogens.