About the Free Spirit 50k

Everyone who has visited the hilltowns of Southern Vermont and Northwestern Massachusetts agrees we have something special here. It's not just the beauty of the rolling countryside, the old farmhouses, the rocky rivers and the woods all around, it's also about the deeply independent and creative spirit of its people. In general, you could say that this is how we like to think for ourselves: we have a lot of artists, craftspeople, poets, writers, organic farmers, and even a few vikings. 

Of course, the original free spirits on this land were the Abenaki, Pocumtuc, and Squagheag peoples, most of whom were eventually driven from the land by war, disease, and dispossession by settlers. They maintained the land through practices such as periodic burns to maintain open land and encourage our native wild lowbush blueberries, which still flourish here today. 

In 1764, Abijah Prince, a formerly enslaved Black man, acquired a plot of land in Guilford, Vermont through a lifetime of saving and military service. He purchased the freedom of his wife, Lucy Terry, who had been born in Africa, was kidnapped, and sent in slavery to Rhode Island and eventually to Deerfield. Lucy Terry Prince was a poet, and her ballad ‘Bars Fight’ is considered to be the oldest known poem by a Black American woman. The Princes were initially prosperous and had six children, but their life in Guilford was sadly tainted with the harassment inflicted on them by their neighbor. In 1785, Lucy appealed to the Governor and his council for protection, which was granted. Vermont was an independent republic at the time. It had not yet joined the United States. You will go right through their old homestead on Abijah Prince Road. 

the 1790s, when William Dorrell, a former British soldier moved to Leyden and began to preach a doctrine based on free love and the sanctity of life - animal as well as human. He attracted a group of followers, the Dorrelites, who embraced his philosophy and practiced his new religion. They were vegan and practiced open marriage. Pretty radical for the 1790's! Much later, in 1968, the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune (later known as the Renaissance Community) was founded in a treehouse on a hill in Leyden, and became one of the largest communes in the northeast United States. 

Just on the other side of the border in Guilford, Vermont was (and still is) home to groups of writers, poets, artists, off-grid homesteaders, and artisans who formed communes in the 1960s and 70s such as the Johnson’s Pastures commune, Total Loss Farm, and Tree Frog Farm. You will run/wheel your way past all of these on the course. When cruising down Packer Corners Road, look for the sculptures of Fenwick, who came to this community in 1969 and is still at work. Thanks to Verandah Porche for letting us cross the field at Total Loss Farm!

For us athletes, moving through the landscape on foot is the best way to get to know it. Exercise in nature is a form of meditation, a ritual, sometimes akin to worship. The Free Spirit 50K wants to offer athletes the best experience of the natural beauty of this particular neck of the woods and celebrate the people and history that makes it unique. As former community member Peter Gould writes, in his book about the time: Horse-Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm:

Other writers have pointed out that we who came ‘back to the land’ in the 1970s eventually and directly enabled so much of today’s positive activity in Vermont and beyond: successful co-ops, organic agriculture, CSAs, farm-to-table food, farmers markets, microbrew beer, artisan cheese, public radio, socially-responsible investing, renewable energy, craft tours, our community college. All these would be radically different or even yet unknown if a generation of idealists had not arrived in these hills nearly 50 years ago.

The Free Spirit 50k is presented by Natural High Running Company LLC,  a small athlete-owned company in Western Massachusetts. 

<- Back home