A hurricane will never surprise us again. But that’s what happened to the people of New England on September 21, 1938. Without any warning, the most destructive weather event ever to hit the Northeast pummeled the coast and blasted its way to Vermont and New Hampshire with torrential rain, flooding, and sustained winds over 100 miles per hour.
Stephen Long tells the story of New England’s Katrina, focusing on the devastation to the region’s forests and the daunting challenge facing New Englanders still in the throes of the Great Depression. His presentation is richly illustrated with archival photos of storm damage and the unprecedented recovery operation, making the storm and its aftermath come alive. A journalist and co-founder of Northern Woodlands magazine, Stephen Long is the author of Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England. .
“A wonderfully written account of an ecologically and socially transformative event that continues to shape the development of New England’s forests and serves as an important point of reflection on disaster preparedness and appropriate management response.”—Anthony D’Amato, University of Vermont.
For more than 30 years, Long has been exploring and writing about New England’s forests. Learning from experts in various forest-related disciplines, he jumped into forest stewardship with the zeal of the newly converted. Before long, he was so taken with the world of forestry, conservation, and wildlife that he and a forester friend started a magazine called Northern Woodlands. Spending time with loggers, birders, other landowners, foresters, hunters, and botanists, he saw the common vision shared by all: this forest has tremendous value, both economic and ecological, and we should do everything we can to keep it intact.
After 17 years at the helm of Northern Woodlands, he was longing to bring his full attention back to his own writing. After leaving the magazine he founded, Long was awarded a Bullard Fellowship at Harvard Forest in 2011. In his fellowship year, he began research on the 1938 hurricane, New England’s most devastating weather event. His own forest in Corinth had been blown down in 1938, a fate shared by Harvard Forest and by 30,000 families. His book, Thirty-Eight, tells the story of how the people and forests recovered from this cataclysmic event. As with all of his work, Thirty-Eight attempts to shed further light on the age-old theme of man’s place in nature.
