Small-scale society has many merits, and the entire state of Vermont is decidedly small-scale.

With a population of fewer than 650,000, a solitary international airport and only two interstate highways, the Green Mountain State is one of the country’s most rural. While its unemployment rates are among the lowest in the United States, so is the average wage—and the cost of doing business outstrips that of many other states.

Vermont has an almost mystical quality that can be felt the moment one crosses into the state from neighboring New York or Massachusetts. It’s not just the allure of the beautifully manicured farms that line the valleys between rolling green mountains. A ruggedly individualistic ethos pervades its tight-knit communities, and neighbors can be counted on to help each other during tough times. It’s a place where the impact of a person’s efforts can be felt immediately, and where homegrown industries such as maple syrup, ice cream and craft brewing can have a major economic impact.

And, for a growing number of communities—particularly in the state’s southern half—seemingly innocuous mountain bike trails are increasingly being viewed as commodities in their own right. At the epicenter of this phenomenon is the quaint town of Rochester, home to the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective (ROC), a 501c3 trail organization that is a chapter of both the Vermont Mountain Bike Association (VMBA) and the Catamount Trail Association. When the group was founded in 2013, it was initially named the Rochester/Randolph Area Sports Trail Alliance. After several years of operation, the scope of the group’s work expanded to include a broad swath of southern Vermont, including Pittsfield, so in 2021 its name was changed to the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective to be more inclusive of the many communities along the Green Mountain spine.