The white-haired man is deep in concentration. In his hands, he grips a pair of L-shaped metal rods, holding them at waist level like a pair of six-shooters. Slowly and deliberately, he walks across the village green, heedless of the knot of spectators. "Please indicate a vein of good drinking water," he says, almost as an incantation. "It should flow at a rate of at least five gallons per minute and should not be more than 20 feet deep." He takes a few more steps, repeating the formula. And, lo, the rods swing 180° apart, forming a single line at right angles to his line of march. "It's here, all right," he announces without a trace of surprise. "Right under us there is a vein of free-flowing water."
A gnarled, 89-year-old man with a face like Robert Frost's, Gordon MacLean of South Portland, Me., looks exactly like what he is, one of the country's foremost practitioners of an ancient and mysterious art that science sneers at and country people swear by. He is a dowser. As people all over the back hills of Vermont will tell you, dowsers can find water in the ground when almost no one else can—literally at the drop of a forked branch or the twist of a metal rod. No one knows how dowsing works, if indeed it does work. Yet as MacLean displays his baffling powers even a visiting skeptic and would-be apostle of science is impressed.
But what else is going on at the 18th annual gathering of the American Society of Dowsers Inc. in the picture-book town of Danville, Vt. (pop. 2,000)? Well, over in the American Legion hall, a psychic healer from Arizona is lecturing about how he knits up broken bones by gently running his hands over the injured area. He also performs exorcisms. In a classroom at the Danville high school, a retired Texas Instruments engineer, Edward Jastram, is busily attributing illness and depression to mysterious "entities" that invade the body, "like mischievous angels." Says Jastram: "Psychedelic drugs especially expose you to such invasions."
In the porticoed town hall, Peter Harmon asserts that he has a knack not only for finding water but also for stranger things, like out-of-the-body trips. "I've been to the moon," he announces with utter solemnity. Then, before a skeptical visitor can mutter "Really?" Harmon explains that he once encountered a moon-walking NASA astronaut at a meeting. "The fellow said to me, 'My gosh, didn't I meet you somewhere before?' " Harmon chuckles. But the apostle of science, shaking his head, does not laugh. Because Harmon clearly believes his own story.
Is dowsing going to the dogs? Not at all, bemused residents of Danville report. What was once a local meeting of workaday dowsers has now turned into an autumnal rite as garish as Vermont's fall foliage. In the 18 years since it was founded, Dowsers Inc. has gone subliminal—as well as international. From as far away as Alaska and New Zealand, nearly 600 people have descended upon Danville. Some come to find water, of course. But just as many others are in search of panaceas for depression, mysterious cures for stubborn ailments. Says Society Spokesman Ted Kaufmann: "It's the spirit of the times, a great belief in things that science can't seem to explain."