Mary Jane Dexter

Despite the lack of snow last winter, the day these pictures were taken in mid-February 2006 was her 75th day skiing this season!

Mary Jane Dexter, known to friends as MJ, started skiing when she was five -- 77 years ago. She grew up in an athletic family with her mother skating on a women’s hockey team and her dad and brothers making annual pilgrimages over to Tuckerman’s Ravine. People around town jokingly call her a “jock,” but what really motivates her is an almost-religious connection she feels with the earth.

“It’s a passion. I get spiritually charged every time I go outside,” she says.

“I have to get outside every day,” she says. In fact, she has a running wager with another lady in town on who will get the most ski days in every winter. (She doesn’t share how many days she’s skied with the other woman until the end, lest her competitor should run out and try to ratchet up her days to beat MJ out!)

Mary Jane just recently conveyed a permanent trail easement to the Catamount Trail Association that will protect a three-quarter-mile section of trail. The 300-mile Catamount Trail runs through Mary Jane’s land in North Wolcott near the Green River Reservoir.

“I am not going to be able to pass this land on to anyone in my family, so it will eventually be sold and I wanted to make sure that the Catamount Trail was permanently protected,” she said. “I have wanted to do this for a very long time.”

Her biggest concern is that the section of trail on her land she just protected isn’t big enough!

The Dexter easement is the first one the CTA has accepted that allows for limited snowmobile use on a portion of the trail protected by the easement.

While not being a huge fan of snowmobiles, MJ was certain that she needed to continue to allow them on her land. “They’re my neighbors, mostly,” she says, “and, since they’re over on the other side of the hill, I can’t hear them!”