The brainchild of Main Street in Motion, Randolph Area Community Development Corporation’s downtown program, Saturday evening’s Illuminated Forest Festival was hugely successful.
The event was free and, without a ticket count, crowd sizes are tricky to estimate. Light wands were a big hit with children, however, and RACDC board member Peter Reed reports 200 were sold. At least double that number likely visited the event featuring a unique lighting display, installed by Burlington’s Illumination Collective throughout Randolph’s floodplain forest. Beginning at 5:30 p.m., almost an hour before dark, visitors had plenty of time to walk the forest’s paths and visit with Illumination Collective members. These technologically savvy artists, many of them Champlain College and UVM students and professors, were happy to discuss their art as they completed the installations.
Graphic designer Richard Stock explained that one very important goal of the Collective is to “create works at the intersection of technology and art” that are interactively accessible to all ages. As darkness deepened, the forest came alive with excitement as visitors walked the paths, coming upon sights and experiences inviting them to enter into creative collaboration with the art and the unique ecosystem providing the setting for the event.
Even without the benefit of artful illumination, the Randolph floodplain forest is mysterious and wonderful, worthy of repeated visitation.
Located in the low-lying acreage between the third branch of the White River, Prince Street, Pleasant Street and Randolph Avenue, it is one Vermont’s largest remaining Sugar Maple-Ostrich Fern Riverine Flood Plain forests (one of the rarer floodplain forest types). Frequently inundated by heavy rains, waters overflowing the Third Branch, and spring thaws, this forest’s living ground of porous soils and plant fiber, like a protective sponge, can absorb astounding amounts of water, reducing the effects of flood events.
RACDC owns 15 acres of the floodplain forest. As part of its stewardship responsibility, the group has implemented many programs over the years to bring public attention to this rare, environmentally important treasure in the heart of Randolph Village.
Julie Iffland, director of RACDC, considered the exuberant crowd flooding into the forest for Saturday’s Illumination event and marveled, “It’s possible that more people are walking through this wonderful wood than have visited it throughout the past decade!”
The Illuminated Forest Festival was a magical community event. And as with all things magical, it disappeared. When the sun came up on Sunday, not a trace remained from the night before.
The forest, however, remains. Those who return here will find interpretive signs along the paths, intended to open their understanding to the magic and rare beauty that illumines this habitat day and night.