Ryan Miller learned of Zeno Mountain Farm a half-dozen years ago from his Guster bandmate Luke Reynolds, who had recently moved to Lincoln in Addison County.

It was a camp in town, Reynolds told Miller, geared toward helping people with disabilities. Year-round, folks with and without disabilities worked on an even plane to put on shows, all for free. Miller went to one of Zeno Mountain Farm’s annual plays, the musical “Best Summer Ever,” and discovered a “gateway drug” that has kept him in the world of Zeno Mountain ever since.

“When I walked in there and saw the play and saw this place and saw this community, I was like, ‘Well, this is the most magical thing on earth,’” said Miller, who lives in Williston. “It feels like science fiction.”

Miller corralled many of Vermont’s highest-profile musicians to perform Nov. 16 in a 12-hour dance marathon at Zeno Mountain. The fundraiser was expected to raise about $100,000, said Peter Halby, who founded the nonprofit camp with his family. That totals roughly a sixth of the organization’s annual budget.

FRONTLINE, PBS’s investigative documentary series produced at GBH in Boston, has selected VTDigger for a yearlong reporting partnership to examine the aftermath of Vermont’s severe flooding and the federal government’s shifting response to natural disasters.

Emma Cotton, who has served as VTDigger’s environmental reporter before becoming a senior editor, will lead the project’s reporting. Her work, as part of FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, will investigate how this extreme weather has affected our residents, housing situation, farms, businesses and landscape.

“Our goal will be to investigate why some Vermont communities are struggling to recover from the floods and how they could be better supported in getting back on their feet,” said Geeta Anand, VTDigger’s editor-in-chief. “We will do this in conversation with people in these communities so that our reporting is deeply informed by those most affected by the floods.” 

VTDigger is one of seven newsrooms selected for FRONTLINE’s Journalism Initiative. Digger will team up with Blue Ridge Public Radio and The Texas Newsroom (the collaboration among NPR stations in the state), providing in-depth coverage of the impact and recovery efforts as we grapple with worsening weather and increased destruction.

“I’m so grateful to have FRONTLINE’s support, which enables us to dedicate a new level of resources to one of the most important stories in the state,” Cotton said. “I look forward to giving this story my complete attention over the next year, and I’m eager to connect with Vermonters across the state to understand how flooding has affected them and their communities.”

Vermont, long cast as a climate haven, is struggling to recover from back-to-back major flooding events, never mind prepare for the next ones. For each of the past three years, extreme flooding has taken place on the same day, July 10.

Small, rural towns, like those in southern Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom, have tiny, sometimes volunteer governments with limited capacity to plan for floods. Some of these towns are currently grappling with millions of dollars in debt — doubling their annual budgets in some instances.

“So many of us were personally affected by these floods — my road washed out two years in a row, and my former Montpelier business was destroyed in 2023,” said Sky Barsch, VTDigger’s CEO. “I know firsthand how vital it is to have deep, sustained reporting on what recovery entails. Under Geeta Anand’s leadership and with Emma Cotton’s excellent reporting, VTDigger is proud to partner with FRONTLINE to bring these stories to light.”

If flooding touched your home, business or town, please share your story (anonymous is OK) to help guide our reporting.

This story by Tom McKone was first published in The Bridge on Nov. 6, 2025.

While doing research about the Civil War, Champlain Valley Union High School social studies teacher Tyler Alexander found an image of an 1872 painting by Julian Scott titled “The 4th Vermont Forming Under Fire,” which he hoped to include in a new book.

The problem was, at least initially, it appeared that no one in Vermont knew the painting even existed.

Internet searches were no help, and it was a few months before Alexander got his first good lead. Years ago, a Texas insurance company asked Vermont art historian Robert Titteron, who had written a book about Julian Scott, to appraise the value of the painting Alexander was seeking, and he still had the written communications. The last known owner was the University of Houston — and not only did the university still have the painting, it was about to auction it off.

Alexander quickly contacted David Schutz, the Vermont State Curator, who immediately contacted Vermont historians Howard Coffin and Kevin Graffagnino. With less than a week before the auction, there was no way to secure state money, so Coffin and Graffagnino asked Vermont Country Store owner Lyman Orton, who owns the largest private collection of Vermont art, for help.

Orton won the bidding for the painting and agreed to lend it to the state for display in the Statehouse’s Cedar Creek Room, which already had four other Civil War paintings by Scott, including “The First Vermont Brigade at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Oct. 19th 1864,” a 10-by-20-foot mural commissioned by the legislature and unveiled in 1874.

Skip forward 151 years, to Oct. 29, 2025, and an unveiling that brought Alexander, Orton, Coffin, Schutz, Graffagnino, a uniformed contingent from Vermont’s Civil War Hemlocks, and scores of other Vermonters to the Cedar Creek Room.

Alexander read a vivid description of the battle from one of the letters in his book, Coffin described the battle portrayed in the painting, Orton talked about his affinity for Vermont art, and Schutz reminded everyone that the Statehouse opened only two years before the Civil War started, and was, in a sense, baptized by that event.

A native of Johnson, Vermont, 15-year-old Scott joined the war as a drummer and fifer. He made camp and battle sketches during the war, and after it, he became a trained artist. Not only is his newly discovered painting on display at the Statehouse — it is also on the cover of Alexander’s new book, “If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War” (University of Nebraska Press 2025).