Lillian “Laurie” Forst Acton of Three Pines Farm in Hartland, Vermont died peacefully on January 24th, 2016 in Pinole, Caifornia, near the home of one of her daughters. The cause of death was Alzheimer’s disease.

Laurie was born in Kingston, New York in 1929. She attended Skidmore College and Harvard University. She lived in Washington DC and later the Boston area before moving to Hartland, where she was the most happy with her farm of Border Leicester sheep. She loved the Vermont landscape, the Vermont way of life, and the people. Laurie was an ardent supporter of nature conservation, environmental protection, and the humane treatment of animals.
All her life, Laurie enjoyed skiing, canoeing, hiking, and wilderness camping. She started skiing at Stowe when they opened the first lift, she hiked up Mt. Washington with her skis, and she canoed white water rapid in New England and out West.

She also loved literature and poetry and had hundreds of poems memorized. She wanted to be buried and not cremated because of the Wordsworth poem, “A Slumber did my Spirit Seal.”

She is survived by her daughters, Ann Burr Winslow and Margrethe “Maggie” Winslow, her grandchildren, Elsa, Toby, Arthur, and Jasper, and by her sister Babette Gade and nieces Kristina Diels and Hilarie Gade.

A service will be held for her at Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito, California on January 29th. Donations in her name can be given to the Upper Valley Land Trust.

A Slumber did my Spirit Seal
By William Wordsworth

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.