After more than two decades with the office and nearly five years as president, I am saying farewell to the Vermont Ski Areas Association. Skiing in Vermont has been the centerpiece of my life and, at the threshold of a new century, the moment invites us to pause and look back to the place from where we have come and ahead to where we might be going.
I will always remember what John Kenneth Galbraith once told a gathering of business leaders in Vermont. Talking about Vermont’s economic development in a speech a few years ago, he said, “We must not be captured by the nostalgia that causes us to think there is something better in the past than what exists in the present or is prospect.”
But perhaps an old fisherman I know put the idea best. He told me once, “The fishing in Vermont was never as good as it used to be.”
So it is with much of life in the Green Mountains. We let memory play tricks on us.
After World War II, young Vermont soldiers came home to an economy that was dying. With the introduction of synthetics like nylon, the woolen mills were either closed or shutting down. With the introduction of new, expensive technologies like the bulk tank, small hillside family farms, where Vermonters had eked out a living for generations, were now being abandoned or foreclosed on. The railroads that had pumped life into towns like Rutland, St. Albans and St. Johnsbury were about to be eclipsed by the Interstate, trucks and automobiles.
The generation that preceded us had a simple choice: They could pull up stakes and move to places that offered more promise and more opportunity to young families, or they could stay and re-invent the Vermont economy. Fortunately, many stayed and for those who gave up, there were others willing to come here and try. Many brought with them a love of the mountains and alpine skiing. But whatever their talents or vocations, all of them came with a pocketful of dreams. Men who had fought with the 10th Mountain Division in the Alps joined hands with the Swiss, the Germans and the Austrians who had grown up in the Alps and immigrated to the mountains that reminded them of home. Together they created the critical mass that was to become the Vermont ski industry.
The hurdles, challenges and battles over the decades were almost too numerous to mention. There was, of course, Mother Nature, who seemed downright kind when compared to unpredictable tax policies, shifting civil liability and a permit process that has multiplied like rabbits. Some winters we faced no snow and many winters we faced outrageous energy bills, mortgage payments and interest rates that dwarfed our mountains. Looking back across the decades, those struggles claimed their share of casualties.
Although I have many fond memories of what was perhaps a simpler time when I was a young girl skiing with my Dad and sisters, for those of us who remember the way we were, it was not so simple then. My old ski boots got to be pretty painful after a few hours of skiing. For a four-foot-tall, seven-year-old-girl, riding up the slope on a rope tow behind a six-foot man was far more challenging than skiing back down.
Grooming left more than a little to be desired and snowmaking was virtually unheard of. For some ski areas, the consequences of fickle weather and no snowmaking were lethal. High Pond, Sky Line, Birdseye and dozens of other small areas have all gone to those graveyards where we bury dreams—bankruptcy courts and auction blocks.
But together, with failures and successes alike, the generation before mine built an industry that now employs more Vermonters than state government and pays an average salary that is almost 15 percent higher than the statewide average. Today, skiing is the heart and soul of tourism in Vermont, soon to be the largest industry in the state, and is unquestionably held to the highest environmental standards of any major employer in the country. The state lease payments of six ski areas alone account for approximately 50 percent of the Vermont Parks Department budget.
The industry these men and women built helped reverse the brain drain that plagued Vermont after World War II. Tom Watson came here to ski before he decided to put IBM in Essex Junction. Robert Schaad came here to ski before he brought Husky to Milton. And Howard Dean, our governor, came here to ski long before he ever thought of running for office.
The contributions skiing has made to Vermont, its families and quality of life in the last half of the last century is remarkable. We have given thousands of young people an opportunity to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. We have provided the tax revenues that have built dozens of schools and the jobs that have paid for thousands of homes. We have brought millions of people from around the world to share with them the splendor of our mountains and our winters. Because of the ski industry, the way we are is indisputably better than the way we were in countless ways.
In two generations, my colleagues have built one of the most important industries in northern New England. Their contributions are literally incalculable. Yet there is no end to the challenges. From my vantage point, the future holds as much promise and as much peril as the past.
The environmental battles, forging a new partnership between human resources and natural resources and redefining the balance between ecology and economy, will consume enormous amounts of sweat and tears. Ski areas, particularly in Vermont, will be on the front line of that battle for the next generation to come.
As demands on our customer’s time and income grow increasingly intense, and as choices and opportunities for travel and recreation proliferate, it is only reasonable to conclude that competition will become increasingly fierce and the pressure to identify markets, to satisfy the customer’s every whim and to capitalize on the economies of scale will become more difficult.
The baby boom and the echo boom remain enormous marketing opportunities, offering millions of new customers to those ski areas that can understand them and be responsive to their demands.
There are new technologies that make learning to ski easier and less intimidating, and also make skiing more accessible to disparate age groups and markets; but reaching out to them and using those new technologies is uncharted territory. These new technologies will also change our pricing, our marketing and our management in ways we are only now beginning to imagine.
And perhaps one of our greatest challenges in the years ahead will simply be finding the time to remember. As our world accelerates and as our markets become more competitive, it will be tempting to think only about the future and about keeping customers satisfied. But if we can’t take the time to remember and to preserve our past, we risk getting lost on our way to the future. It is not that it was all simple then, but that it is who we are and where we came from.
The entire world has changed radically since our industry was born. Yet one of the things that has remained constant is the character of the people I have worked with in the ski industry. They are dreamers because they live outdoors and they see life from the mountaintops. They are optimists because Mother Nature doesn’t give them any other choice. They are energetic because winter demands it. They are more interested in people than technology because their business is people, not computers. No on-line business is ever going to compete with the real thing when it comes to being outdoors in the mountains in winter. Ski industry people know how to laugh and they know how to have fun, because skiing is fun. They are as competitive as any team on earth, but they are bound together by a shared vision and a code of honor.
The next century, in many ways, will be like the last. Some will race and lose. Some may win gold medals. Some will go bankrupt. Some of us may make fortunes, lose fortunes and make them again. The ski industry is going to continue to struggle as it always has. And inch by inch, we will make life better, just like we always have. But the ultimate measure of success or failure won’t be our bank accounts, though we hope they prosper; or the gold medals we acquire, though we like to win.
Whether we are on the top or the bottom, in the end it is the content of our character that will be the measure of our success. The people who built Vermont’s ski areas and with whom I have been privileged to work for, have always understood that. Above all, my wish in this new century and in this new era of high-tech, fast-paced information revolutions, is that we will continue to be wise enough to measure ourselves by who we are and not just what we are.
