Wind towers in Sheffield as seen from Route 91.    Photo by Joseph Gresser

The other day, as we were driving down Perron Hill in Glover, I heard my son take a sharp intake of breath.   He said, “Oh! Mom, look.”

I thought something was wrong and said, “What?”

He said, “It’s the wind towers.  They’re up.”

Five of them were up that day, and they were clearly visible from our road.  They will be visible from the house once the leaves are off the trees.  I asked my son what he thought.  “Awesome,” he said.

One of the things I notice about the increasingly vitriolic debate over wind power in the Northeast Kingdom is the polarization about aesthetics.  Some people call the towers “atrocities.”  Others say they’re awesome.

The economics of wind power is a legitimate debate.  Is it a viable source of renewable energy?  I don’t know.

Will the noise drive some people crazy?  I don’t know.

Will wildlife be displaced or water quality debased?  I don’t know.

Is it unfair to concentrate wind farms in this relatively unpopulated part of the state rather than in Chittenden County where there’s just as much wind, more demand for power, and also more political sway?  Undoubtedly.

But I have long thought that opposing wind towers on the basis of aesthetics, arguing that they will visually ruin the Northeast Kingdom and demolish tourism, is plain spurious, sometimes so silly that it diminishes the position of those who have more legitimate reasons to oppose them.

Please.  How much tourism is there in Sheffield?  Or Lowell?  Will people no longer go skiing at Burke, or rent a cabin on Crystal Lake because wind turbines are in view?  Will people refuse to travel Route 100 and stop at Lowell’s store because there are wind turbines in town?  Will people stop hiking the Long Trail?

I do not think the presence of wind towers will kill tourism, and I do not think they will draw tourism.  I think the turbines will soon cease to be a novelty and people will neither come to the Northeast Kingdom to see them or avoid the Northeast Kingdom because of them.  I do not think they will enhance real estate sales, or douse real estate sales.

Case in point:  A few weeks ago a young couple with two young children stopped to look at some land that’s for sale across the road from me.  I went out to rescue them from my enthusiastic puppy, and we got talking.

I said, “I feel compelled to tell you, from that land, the Sheffield wind towers are highly visible.  Many people feel strongly about wind towers one way or the other.”

The woman lit up.  She said, “Oh, we’re from Maine, and we live near wind towers there.  We love them, and that would be a real bonus for us, to live near them here.  We think they’re beautiful.”

They wanted to live in rural Vermont, off-grid, and have a low footprint, they said.  They considered proximity to wind towers a major selling point for that property, and their interest in it spiked.

About a week later, another couple showed up to look at the land.  I also mentioned the wind towers to them.  They were largely indifferent but did not see proximity to wind towers a plus in their quest for a rural Vermont experience.

Beauty is usually in the eye of the beholder.  What some consider an eyesore, others consider lovely or intriguing.

Some people think they’re ugly; some think they’re beautiful.  Most people will barely notice them after a while — no more than we see the hundreds of telephone poles and webs of phone and electric lines that are everywhere. In fact, my view of the Sheffield wind towers is split by four low-hanging, black utility lines.

Imagine proposing that kind of pervasive —and in my opinion, ugly — infrastructure today.