Mentor pair Mark Christensen and Orion Lucas biking in Burlington

Cabot Chronicle Article May, 2026


    For this month's article I thought I would share my personal story with mentoring. In 2010 Richard Bushey was mudding and taping drywall at our house and he casually mentioned that I would be a good mentor for a kid. I made excuses for why I could not but I couldn’t let go of the idea. I’d been thinking: I’ve lived here for over 10 years and it’s about time I started giving back to the community. So next thing you know I’m in Kathleen Hoyne’s office and she’s interviewing me. She said she had 2 boys who were ready to be matched. One was a middle-schooler and the other was age 7 and in 1st grade. My son, Blue, was 8 at the time so I said the older boy might be a better fit but I also said that I would work with whoever had the greatest need. As it turned out, the older boy wasn’t available after all so I was matched with Elijah with whom I had a wonderful 8 plus years of mentoring. We got together a few times a month and did all sorts of things like playing games, seeing movies, visiting museums, sledding, hunting for frogs and I took him to the Nutcracker ballet in Barre which he loved. I had him over for dinner with our family several times but mostly we did things one-on-one. The last couple years he was in high school and we switched to In-School mentoring where I would meet him at the school once a week and for an hour we’d walk around the village, usually getting a snack and playing UNO or some other game at the hardware store or at a picnic table at the Willey Building. He nearly always trounced me at UNO.

    After that I mentored a couple other boys In-School which worked great with my school bus driving schedule. Mostly we'd go weekly for walks around the village, exploring creeks and trails and maybe get a snack at the store. All 4 of the boys I did this with seemed to really appreciate getting an hour of break from school and the one-on-one attention of an adult. I know the school teachers and counselors also appreciated this.

    In 2023 I began mentoring Orion, who's now 11, and we’re still together. The first year we did In-School but then switched to Community Mentoring. We’ve done so many fun things together including cross-country skiing at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center and last spring, with Ride the Ridges funds, the mentoring program purchased a second-hand refurbished bicycle from The Old Spokes Home in Burlington which is on loan to Orion until he grows out of it. After we picked up the bike we went down to the waterfront park on Lake Champlain and he learned to ride a bicycle all over again. Since then we’ve had many great after school rides mostly on the rail trail in Danville, Walden or Hardwick often followed by an ice cream cone.

    The greatest gift I receive from being a mentor is the break I get from my busy life. Often when our time together is approaching I become a bit stressed thinking that I don’t have the time but usually after we’ve been hanging together for a couple of hours and I’m having fun, I’ll become relaxed and turn to him and say, thank you for spending time with me because I forgot about my busy list of things to do!

- Mark Christensen