[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
EAB is an invasive pest killing Vermont’s 160 million ash trees (one in 12 trees). The following poem by Adelle M. Brunstad, 18, of Enosburgh Falls is one of three winners of a writing contest about EAB presented by Young Writers Project and the Vermont Urban & Community Forestry Program (UCF), a collaboration of University of Vermont Extension and the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. Read all submissions to this contest here.
UCF is working to raise awareness about EAB and to help manage its impact. EAB has been confirmed in 35 states and has killed millions of ash trees across the country. It has been identified in five Vermont counties (Orange, Washington, Caledonia, Bennington, Grand Isle) and is expected to spread across the state. UCF says, “While the loss of our ash trees is inevitable, identifying infestations early and slowing the spread will give communities time to plan to mitigate the economic and ecological impacts of the pest.” You can help here.
If a Tree Falls in the Forest
By Adelle M. Brunstad, 18
[I] am 237 years old today,
the oldest tree in this forest.
I am a living measurement of time,
a history book in its most natural form.
Wizened by decades of observation,
witness to catastrophes and wonders you will never know,
but there is one tragedy I will tell you.
One of every twelve trees in Vermont are ash trees like me
and their wails in the wind
warn of imminent death
in the form of an emerald beetle.
Their larvae grow under our bark, feed on our flesh,
blocking our transportation of water and nutrients
until our skin becomes brittle and splits,
our crowns of foliage fall and we die of thirst and starvation,
These invasive aliens won’t stop until we’ve all collapsed,
returning to the earth we once rose from.
You may be thinking, “It’s just trees,
why should we care?”
Our lives are more entwined than you realize.
We take your exhales and turn them into inhales.
We help make your Green Mountains green.
If your ancestors had not used our wood to make paper,
what would you know of the past?
If they had no wood to make shelters, to start fires for warmth,
to cook food, perhaps you would have never existed.
All we ask for in return is for you to not be indifferent.
For as fast as the emerald ash borer spreads, let these words spread faster.
Don’t let my story die with me.
Because if I fall in the forest and no one is there to hear me, I will not make a sound.
Hear Adelle read her poem:
