LSC Alum Grooms Trails in Retirement

4/17/08

By Norman Johnson
Critic Staff

It’s a cold, blue-bird-sky morning, David Dwyer, 62, drives the Mule, a two-seat tracked vehicle used in grooming cross-country trails over frozen brown grass and patches of corn snow on the Bemis Trail below Darling Hill Rd. in Lyndonville. Dwyer and his wife Kathy live up the hill and the trail crosses part of their property.

Dwyer's checking how much snow is left on the trail. Ski season is over and trail maintenance for the bike trails will start in a few weeks. Dwyer has been grooming ski trails for the Kingdom Trails organization since he retired from Lyndon Institute in 2006 after 35 years of teaching and coaching.

He explains the differences in maintaining the trails between winter and summer. “You have to groom smooth and 12 feet wide for the skiers,” Dwyer said. "Sometimes they'll complain if there's the slightest little bump. With the bikers, it’s ‘Bring it on,’ rocks, stumps—they don’t care. And the trail is only a bike tire wide,” Dwyer laughed.

“I came here in 1967,” Dwyer said in a hard Rhode Island accent, the "here" sounding like, "he’ya” to the rest of us. “The Vietnam War was on. I was about to be drafted and Lyndon State was on the draft list,” Dwyer said, meaning LSC was one of the colleges in the 60s admitting anyone in eminent danger of being drafted.

Then the LSC campus was split between the Burklyn mansion on Darling Hill and the old Vail mansion, where the present campus is. “A friend of mine drove the campus bus,” Dwyer said. “The weekend I came to look things over there was a big party with two bands at Lawson’s Auction House on Rt. 5.” Dwyer said the Northeast Kingdom looked a lot better than being shot at in a rice paddy and he stayed. "I majored in not getting shot," he laughed.

“Politically it was a very liberal place to be, we were what you’d call hippies,” Dwyer said. “Kent State [the student shootings] had happened and we all went to Washington to protest. Everyone at the college was from New York, New Jersey, or were locals.” He said in the sixties, locals mostly came off the farm.

After Dwyer graduated from LSC with a degree in English, he did volunteer work at Lyndon Institute teaching pre-special-ed reading. “LI was perennially the state championship team,” Dwyer said about LI’s athletic program.

“Merlyn Corser was physical education coach at the time. Been there forever,” Dwyer said. “She said one day, ‘You know, you ought to go into coaching.’” Dwyer agreed. He began recruiting kids in the hallways at LI. and eventually worked it into the cross-country program he coached until retiring. "There's a rich history of skiing here," Dwyer said.

“I loved being around kids,” Dwyer said. "When I started at LI, I was 23 and most of my students were 17 or 18." Dwyer continued. "I didn’t like school much. I went to Catholic school for 12 years and it wasn’t a lot of fun,” he said.

At LI, “I got to see the whole spectrum. We had the best and worst skiers in the country, some even went to the Olympics," Dwyer said. "I saw them happy, angry, hurt, or crying." He thought a moment, "I think I talked to more parents over coaching than school. Some kids went to work, and some went to Harvard.”

“I don’t remember much of an interview process,” Dwyer said of being hired by LI. “There wasn’t a union. Usually unions are formed out of problems. My contract was one paragraph. That says a lot for LI,” Dwyer said.

Some of the best cross-country skiing in the area is on Darling Hill ridge, by the Wildflower Inn. Dwyer skis and grooms, a good combination. He believes in the Kingdom Trail organization, started by mountain bike aficionados, owners and employees in East Burke. The 100 miles of bike trails cross 40-50 private properties, the written agreements granting access to bikers and skiers. “Without them,” Dwyer said of the landowners, “Kingdom Trails would be nothing."

Dwyer grinds the Mule up to a small bridge spanning a frozen stream bed and stops. He eyeballs the mound of snow still on the bridge, mentally calculates the bridge supports and says, "I better not." He throws the machine into reverse, turns it around and heads back down the trail.

"Obama," Dwyer exclaims and launches into what the Democratic presidential hopeful was saying this week. Dwyer, at 62, is still very much a child of the 60s.