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Preserving the Essence of Vermont By PAUL GILLIES

Here's the headline: "K.W. Morse Arrested." Dateline: August 1, 1909. It is not a real headline, because the offense seemed so minor at the time that nobody probably thought much of it. His crime? Swimming in Berlin Pond. Heinous as the offense seemed at the time to the arresting officer, Morse's appeal and the 1911 Supreme Court decision that bears his name was the first state action validated by our court system.

The Morse decision leads directly to Act 250 and local zoning and every other progressive, environmental idea in the century and to the idea that state government has a constitutional claim to regulate the use of private property without compensation.

The government, in this instance the state Board of Health, could enact a rule prohibiting swimming in Berlin Pond as an exercise of the police power. The power was authorized because germs from Morse's body might pollute the drinking water of Montpelier. The court announced its recognition and acceptance of the germ theory in this historic decision, and Morse paid a fine. There is no news of whether he got the deposit back on the remainder of his summer lease.

Yes, there are ample federal laws to help with the protection of the environment, but Vermont has made an international reputation on strong land use control laws, particularly Act 250, and including the anti-billboard law, the bottle redemption law, among others. All of that is possible because of Morse's dive into Berlin Pond, and his willingness to challenge the prosecution.

Against the backdrop of a dozen controversies over development in all parts of the state, in the face of a growing distaste for sprawl, and celebrations over the purchase of development rights in critical areas, Vermont is hardly through with its environmental revolution. As developable land grows scarcer, as the population base grows, there will be expected tensions between private property and public interests. Watch Morse swim by if you want to predict who'll prevail.

And the winner is . . . Ethan Allen. What? He's been dead for 200 years! Well, there's really nobody else who inspires us the way he does, as Vermonters. He isn't dead. You can't kill a revolutionary character like that merely by the passage of time.

The man had a will to keep Vermont free and independent. That's the same faith instilled in every Vermonter from the ground up, and it's taught to us by the image of this swaggering daredevil who had the sand to tell the New York attorney general that, "The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills."

OK, you're not buying this, I can see. But give me a second chance and I'll give you the century's own embodiment of Ethan, in the unlikeliest disguise as George Aiken, As Governor Aiken and Senator Aiken, he inspired Vermonters, and continues to do so today. "Declare victory, and leave."

It's more than a sound bite. It's a philosophy, learned on the farm when the boulder was too big to move in the pasture or the apple crop failed because of an early frost. It's about the responsibility of setting limits and facing up to reality. He was smart, but he didn't look like he was smart. He was tight with money, spending a total of $17.09 on his 1968 campaign for Senate, and we loved him for that. He was a progressive but he sounded like a conservative. He was fearless and confident about his ideas. He knew what he knew, and he wasn't afraid to say it.

Aiken still lives too. He lives on in every member of our congressional delegation, when the interests of Vermont become clear. He sits among the legislators in the Vermont State House, and informs them with his character. His character reverberates through Environmental Board deliberations, the weekly decisions of a thousand select boards, and in individual Vermonters, whose character is based at least in some degree on the fact that there was a George Aiken and he was ours, whether they knew him or not.

This is the wise old owl, the wildflower expert from Putney who became the confidant of presidents, the essential Vermonter. Talk about apotheosis!

Paul Gillies served as deputy secretary of state from 1981-1993.