Above it all but feeling unstilted

By Diane Daniel, Globe Columnist, 8/4/2002

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They're walking tall in tiny Fairlee, Vt., thanks in large part to Stephanie Daniels of Somerville. In just a few years, Daniels, 33, has taught more than a dozen of Fairlee's 950 residents to walk on stilts, and this year she led her biggest group ever - about 25 marchers - in the Fairlee Fourth of July Parade. Half of them were on stilts, and the other half were spotters and banner wavers. "But we were all in costume," she quickly adds.

Daniels, who is development coordinator at OCP Chocolate, an organic chocolate distributor in Cambridge, learned to stilt in 1997, when she was a member of Class Acts, a Boston-based political theater troupe.

"One of our members was a Brazilian performer who walked on stilts. It seemed like so much fun, and I wanted to do it. So she taught me."

Daniels says one of the great things about stilting is the learning curve.

"In half an hour to an hour I could do it by myself. It's so exciting to see, especially for kids who say `I can't do that. ' And then they do it. It's an exotic circus art that you can actually learn," says Daniels, who first took her skills to the Open Air Circus, a children's circus in Somerville.

For several years, she has visited her "surrogate family," longtime friends who live in Fairlee. Most of them are members of or connected to the family that owns the Chapman General Store, the so-called "center of the world" in Fairlee, which sits on the west bank of the Connecticut River, just over the border from New Hampshire and near the White Mountains.

"In 1998 I got the idea to teach people before the parade. People were so excited that we decided to jump into the parade. We had seven stilters in the first year," Daniels says.

She had borrowed the stilts from the Open Air Circus, but also handed out stilt-building instructions and people started to make their own. (She refers the curious to www.zeitgeist.net/wfca/buildstilts.html.)

"That's how it snowballed," she says. "The next year a lot of people had stilts. Since then, some of the kids have gone on to bigger stilts, and one little girl joined a yearly circus camp in Hanover."

Many of the Chapmans and assorted relatives and friends have learned to stilt, including all five of Aletta Chapman's children.

"We've built up a stock of costumes and have lots of pants," Daniels says.

This year's parade theme was "Long Let it Wave." Everyone wore some variety of red, white, and blue clothing. Stilt heights ranged from 21/2 to 5 feet.

For the spotters, "We made foam hands on big sticks and flags that said `Freedom.' For banners we made two huge ocean waves, like wooden forms, on hinges. And the waves would go back and forth."

A renegade group no more, "the Fairlee Stilters" now get official recognition. Parade watchers, who come from several surrounding towns, cheer when the stilters go by.

"People roar," Daniels says, especially the kids from nearby summer camps. "We've won first prize in the miscellaneous category each year. People don't know what to make of us, but they love us."

Over the years three stilters in her group have fallen, "but no one's gotten hurt." When it happens, she says, "Everyone gasps. But the people who have fallen have all gotten up and gone back in the parade."

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