Vermont science museum makes a splash

By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent, 07/28/02

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NORWICH, Vt. — Few cities can boast a facility as fine as the Montshire Museum of Science. Happily, this hands-on science center isn't in a city. It's on 110 trail-webbed acres beside the Connecticut River.

What's more, the Montshire, which has just undergone two major expansions, is focused more than ever on its immediate environs: the Upper Valley and The Connecticut River.

"Montshire" and "Upper Valley" are both names coined years ago by local newspapermen. "Montshire" derives from "New Hampshire" and "Vermont," and "Upper Valley" has come to designate New England's most distinctive bi-state region, the dozen or so towns scattered along both sides of the Connecticut river north and south of its cultural center, Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

In the early 1970s, Dartmouth closed its fusty old natural history museum and donated its collection to launch this community science center. Initially it was housed in a former bowling alley, but in 1989 it moved into this striking building in Norwich, just across the bridge from Hanover.

A science numbskull myself, I have stopped by the Montshire a half-dozen times over the years, inevitably spending longer than I had planned, mesmerized by the see-through beehive, discovering which vegetables and fruits float or contemplating the physics of bubbles. The museum's goal is to demystify natural phenomena, and it does, in a fun way. Most exhibits, even the boa constrictors (at designated times), are "hands on."

This summer, when you walk into the Montshire and step beyond its admissions desk, you are already in the 10,000-square-foot addition, which opened in June. It blends seamlessly with the original, two-story atrium. New exhibits are, moreover, intermingled with old throughout the museum.

Congress has designated the entire Connecticut River Watershed to be a National Fish and Wildlife Refuge named for Western Massachusetts congressman Silvio O. Conte. Funding has been allocated for several interpretive centers spaced along the river's length. The new wing and exhibits at the Montshire represent the first such center to open.

What you notice are many exhibits devoted to water, specifically to the river and watershed. Gleaming new tanks are filled with still or moving water, depending on which their residents — yellow-striped perch, small mouth bass, and speckled rainbow trout among them — prefer. A low circular table is embedded with small turtle-like creatures, the most amazing fossils I have ever seen or touched. Turn on a spigot, and water drips into silt below. You then click on a simulation of a river creating an estuary. Less subtle additions include a 7-foot moose and a granite rendition of the 410-mile Connecticut River.

Coincidentally, the Montshire's brand new 2-acre Science Park is also about water in general, rivers in particular. Water bubbles from a seven-foot Barre granite boulder. From this "headwater," a 250-foot long "rill" flows downhill, snaking over a series of terraces, inviting you to manipulate dams and sluices to change its flow and direction. Visitors are advised to bring towels.

You can also shape a variety of fountains, cast shadows to tell the time, and (by pushing a button) identify the call of the birds and insects you are actually hearing.

Many exhibits also qualify as art. Ed Kahn's "Wind Wall," a billboard-sized sheet attached to the museum's tower, is composed of thousands of silvery flutter discs that shimmer in the breeze, resembling patterns on a pond riffled by wind. And there is the "musical fence," designed by Paul Matisse (grandson of Henri) as a public art piece for a site in Cambridge, which was moved here after neighbors objected.

From the Science Park a path tunnels under railroad tracks and along the river. It's recently been tidied for strollers and wheelchairs, but resident wildlife doesn't seem to mind. Two deer vanished into the woods as we approached, and a big beaver scurried across our path.

The Montshire offers 4 miles of easy walking trails, with the longer loops accessed improbably enough from its observation tower via a bridge leading to a wooded ridge. It's billed as a "walking tour of the solar system" and begins with a model of the sun with each of the nine planets in our solar system spaced at intervals. To reach tiny Pluto requires a two-mile walk. This blending of inside and out distinguishes the museum throughout.

ufauthorChristina Tree of Cambridge is coauthor of "Vermont: An Explorer's Guide."