bridge+boardwalk – Birds of Vermont Museum

October 7, 2025March 10, 2026

Help Us Get to the Other Side!

Water Damage

You can Help!

We need your help to get to the other side! We have a plan to re-cross Sherman Hollow Brook, and need your help to help fund the construction.

Everything helps, from $5 once, $50 monthly, to $5000 annually.

Bob’s Bridge has been closed since July 2024. Torrential rains and floods that month damaged the bridge and its footing. For safety, the Museum closed it, limiting public access to the museum’s trails on the 60 acres across Sherman Hollow Brook. This also restricted access to Gale’s Retreat.

First Steps

Right after the flood, we began working with Timber and Stone LLC and DeWolfe engineers. Together we are designing and will build a new accessible bridge!

The new route includes a board walk, places to pause and bird, and views above the stream. The new bridge will be above the 100-year flood mark and allow us to reopen the trails for everyone. By rerouting access, we make the access more gradual, more accessible, and minimize erosion into the brook. Continue reading “Help Us Get to the Other Side!”

December 15, 2024March 10, 2026

Endure, Change and Bridge: 2024 annual appeal

Enduring qualities and ongoing change: these shaped 2024. Endurance and change are like the rocks and the water of a creek. Museum founders Bob Spear and Gale Lawrence shared these qualities with all who helped them. They opened their lands and barn-turned-museum to everyone and for decades shared their love of birds. They created museum trails that are free to wander year-round. You can walk or sit, listen or look, observe birds or the whole forest, reflect, meditate, open your senses, be inspired. You can help create an accessible route for everyone, from the museum building all the way to the Retreat. Continue reading “Endure, Change and Bridge: 2024 annual appeal”

July 16, 2024March 10, 2026

Flooding, thanks to Hurricane Beryl

We hope you and yours are safe from the recent flooding due to Hurricane Beryl. For those who have experienced loss, our hearts go out to you. Our Treehouse, Bird Blind, and benches in the “garden” offer places to rest and find respite.

The museum and its grounds are resilient. The good news is that the museum building, the entrance bridge, culvert area, and step-pools in the tributary to Sherman Hollow Brook are undamaged and intact. The Treehouse, picnic areas, pond, Story trail, and the Bird Blind all are fine. Come and walk or sit whenever you need to.

This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with flood damage. We thank everyone who was part of the Bridges to Birds reconstruction in 2013-2015 for their amazing generosity and superb work: volunteers, donors, John Scott Excavating, Dean Grover Engineering, Timber and Stone LLC, and Anne Dannenberg. They created the entrance bridge, the rain garden, the step-pools in the tributary to Sherman Hollow Creek, and the pollinator plantings that protect the slopes. All of that handled the heavy flows of water as intended, demonstrating how a resilient design can cope with a changing climate.

Other parts of our property were not so fortunate. Continue reading “Flooding, thanks to Hurricane Beryl”