Vermont Adaptive widens access to the outdoors

BARNARD — As the Wednesday morning sun reflected brightly against Silver Lake, a small eagle circled above a pair of floating loons, dragonflies hopped along the water and an aqua damselfly zipped almost imperceptibly around a two-seater kayak.

“It’s a loon!” exclaimed Debbie Rhodes, a 62-year-old woman who has a cognitive disability.

The loon was having breakfast, explained her instructor, Liz Mead, who sat behind her, paddling to match Rhodes’ rhythm. The two followed the same path they’ve taken every summer for the past three years: straight on from the shoreline to a red box-like house, then right toward the bridge, before looping back. On occasion, Mead gently gave reminders: angle the paddle up against the water, keep it nice and straight.

In other words, it was a typical Vermont summer day. That is precisely the point for Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports, an organization that, as its name suggests, adapts outdoor sports education for people with disabilities.

Since its founding in 1987, Vermont Adaptive has grown to provide year-round opportunities to learn skiing, snowboarding, canoeing, kayaking, sailing, tennis and more. In 2022, the group organized 4,651 outings across the state, with 930 unique participants instructed by 367 volunteers. This includes both group experiences, like the Silver Lake paddling excursion, as well as individual ski lessons.

The organization has its original home base on Pico Mountain, as well as recent additions at Sugarbush Resort and the Burlington waterfront. Clients include veterans, stroke survivors, and children and adults with cognitive, physical and behavioral disabilities.

In June, Mead, a longtime volunteer, was honored with a 2023 Myra Kraft Community MVP Award from the Kraft family and the New England Patriots Foundation, which brought in $10,000 to Vermont Adaptive. The award money, along with fundraising efforts and previous grants from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Red Sox Foundation and The Hartford, a Fortune 500 insurance company, allow the organization to be accessible to everyone.

“There are some clients that do pay, but there are also clients that never,” Mead said. “It’s, ‘you do what you can.’”

All of Vermont Adaptive’s volunteer instructors have their own story of how they came to be involved in the organization.

Tommy Alcorn grew up alongside a stepbrother who was born with spina bifida and lived an active, independent life.

Emmett Norton remembered a time when he and his wife would alternate taking their son out skiing and staying home with their daughter Erin, who is nonverbal and has a cognitive disability. The day of her first ski lesson at Sugarbush Resort when she was 10, it was “5 degrees, blowing like crazy,” he remembered. “Erin’s eyebrows were covered with ice and she was all pink,” but she didn’t want to go inside. She was “hooked,” he said.

For Liz Mead, a native of New Jersey, decorative artist and mother of two adult sons, her story began at a bar in Winooski in the 1980s, when she was a student at St. Michael’s College. She remembered her half-joking outrage at her friends for going skiing at Mad River Glen without her that day. As they were leaving, one friend promised to go with her the following weekend.

That week, he was in a construction accident and became paraplegic. “He had a terrible trauma and a long road back and you know, little by little, he did find his way back,” she said. Years later, after she had graduated, she recalled him saying to her, “Oh Liz, by the way, I’m making up that ski that I owe you. I’m going out to Winter Park (and) I want you to come.”

That trip to Colorado was the first time Mead saw firsthand a skiing lesson adapted for a person who uses a wheelchair. She felt “intrigued” and touched by the transformative power of it.

“Talk about the difference in someone’s face from the beginning of the day to the end of the day,” she said, remembering her friend’s post-ski glow.

As an instructor at Vermont Adaptive, Mead’s goal is to provide her clients with consistency, while being amenable to “meeting them where they are” on any given day.

“Even if it’s the same client, it’s almost always a completely different lesson,” she said. It could be an easy lesson on one day and the following week, “the client doesn’t even want to put their ski boots on,” she said. “I love the challenge and the variety of that. It’s like a puzzle that you have to figure out every time.”

Part of solving the adaptation puzzle lies in parsing out a person’s needs and figuring out what changes need to be made to the equipment, while ensuring safety.

Sometimes someone has already figured it out and it’s as easy as purchasing adaptive sports equipment from a company. That could include an adaptive mono-ski for someone who uses a wheelchair, or padded parts that clip onto the seat of a canoe to provide stability for a person who has restricted use of their core.

Other times, it might be a MacGyvered solution, like a kayak paddle with straps made out of duct tape, to provide more support and security for a person who has function in only one hand.

Carol Eastman, one of the primary caregivers of a young man nicknamed Eddie, who has epilepsy and partial mobility of one hand and uses a wheelchair, remembered her awe at the duct-taped paddle.

With Eddie, “you can’t restrain the hand, but you can try to get his weak hand on the paddle and then maneuver it. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it,” she said. “For (the instructors) to learn each year different people’s disabilities and how to adapt to that is just amazing.”

Wednesday’s participants, more than 20 people, were all from Zack’s Place, a learning center based in Woodstock that provides daily activities — from arts and crafts to theater and sports — for people who have disabilities, including cerebral palsy, autism and Down syndrome. The two organizations have a decades-long partnership and share the goal of providing enrichment and community to people with disabilities.

People with disabilities in Vermont live independently, in their family home or in an assisted-care facility, depending on their needs and financial capacity. For those who aren’t able to drive or travel alone, having an aide or family member to assist opens up access to activities like those provided by Vermont Adaptive.

However, many family members have full-time jobs of their own and privately-hired aides come at an additional cost. But the alternative is staying at home all day, often isolated. The organization tries to help by providing programming free of charge to those who cannot afford it.

“There’s a better way to do this. There’s a better way to spend the day,” said Mead.

Back on the water, Mead reflected on the impact of these outings. “For some of these people, this is it,” she said. “This is their whole social scene.” She has seen clients grow in confidence and independence over the years, from fearing the water to paddling alone.

Some clients rely on her presence, asking after her if she isn’t there.

In the summer, Mead drives back and forth weekly between her home in Vermont and the New Jersey Shore, where her friends and extended family live. The day before, in New Jersey, her friends asked why she wouldn’t just stay. “I’ll get in trouble,” she told them. “You don’t understand; people are waiting for me.”

“I know in the grand scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket,” Mead said of her volunteering, as she rested the paddle across her lap. “Yeah, but it’s my drop in that bucket.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount awarded to VTAdaptive from the Kraft family.

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