Lakebone

The Lakebone sculpture tells many stories.

Located in Burlington, Vermont, artist Nancy Winship Milliken's monumental public artwork invites viewers to reflect on the connections between forests and waterways, history and ecology, communities and landscapes, and the choices that shape the future health of the Lake Champlain watershed.

The suspended black locust tree and living pollinator meadow encourage us to look beyond what we immediately see. They remind us that the health of Lake Champlain begins far from the shoreline—in forests, streams, wetlands, floodplains, farms, schoolyards, and communities throughout the watershed.

Those connections extend far beyond Burlington. The Lake Champlain watershed spans 8,234 square miles of land in Vermont, New York, and Québec, linking thousands of streams, rivers, wetlands, forests, farms, and communities to a shared body of water. Every drop of rain that falls within this basin eventually makes its way to Lake Champlain through an intricate network of connected landscapes and waterways.

Since its founding in 1963, the Lake Champlain Committee (LCC) has worked to help people understand, protect, and restore those connections. Through science, education, stewardship, advocacy, and community engagement, LCC works to safeguard the waters, habitats, and landscapes that sustain life throughout the Lake Champlain Basin.

Lakebone reminds us that everything is connected. Forests influence streams. Streams influence rivers. Rivers influence the lake. Pollinator habitat, floodplains, wetlands, farms, forests, and communities are all part of a larger living system.

This page was created to help visitors explore some of the ideas and relationships reflected in Lakebone. Whether you are interested in natural history, community science, environmental education, stewardship, recreation, or public policy, there are many ways to become involved.

The story of Lake Champlain cannot be told without trees. Forests cover more than seventy percent of the land that drains into the lake and play a vital role in filtering runoff, stabilizing streambanks, reducing flooding, supporting biodiversity, storing carbon, and sustaining healthy aquatic ecosystems. 

Just as trees need water to survive, our waters depend on trees. This relationship is especially important in the areas along streams, rivers, and wetlands where the land and water meet. Trees’ strong woven root structures help keep riverbanks in place, retaining nutrient-laden sediment and preventing erosion. Their roots reduce the amount of stormwater runoff entering waterways while filtering pollutants. During floods, riverside forests allow water to "breathe" across the floodplains instead of rushing downstream, reducing the influx of nutrients that can drive cyanobacteria blooms.

In forested communities, living trees are food, houses, air purifiers, roads, playgrounds, backscratchers, shade sources, beds, and refuge for a wide variety of species. Yet a tree’s life does not end in death. Decaying trees teem with biological activity, making way for new life. Snags, or standing dead and dying trees, host a diversity of invertebrates in their tissues. The softened wood allows woodpeckers and other cavity nesters to bore a hole and make a home. Once abandoned, these cavities host a wider array of other wildlife looking for a place to move in. Some species, including wood ducks and bluebirds, evolved to nest in snag cavities and depend on them for survival.

One of the most powerful aspects of Lakebone is its ability to encourage people to look more closely at the natural systems that shape the Lake Champlain Basin. For more than thirty years, LCC's Lake Look columns have helped readers explore the natural history of the watershed through stories that connect science, ecology, and place. These articles reveal the remarkable relationships that often go unnoticed—from the role trees play in protecting water quality to the ways wildlife, floodplains, wetlands, and seasonal changes shape the health of the lake.