Shagbark Farm
by Cecele Kraus
In one curve of the road Christmas trees dominate. In another, bare birches punctuate the landscape. Rising like loaves of bread in this New York corridor between the Taconic Ridge and the Hudson River, these hills are the site of Shagbark Farm, once a Dutch colonial home and now headquarters for a tree industry. My husband and I live eleven minutes from the nearest grocery, and though the two-lane highway is quicker I prefer the dips and rises of the ridge roads. Stands of trees proliferate--shades, evergreens, ornamental and fruit trees, boxwoods, dwarfs, conifers and viburnum. Species blocked off like segregated neighborhoods take over pastures and sloped hills.
In spring hydrangeas pink the vistas. Trees bred into twisted branches sloop toward the ground like animated film characters about to come to life; their drooping shapes appear designed for mourning. We bought a house in Columbia County when our children were little and moved here when they were in college. It is a county shaped by entrepreneurial ambition. In the 1600s, the Livingston family purchased its southern half from the Mohicans and hired indentured Dutch immigrants. The immigrants refused to pay taxes and gained ownership of land. Dairy farms proliferated and then declined in the first half of the twentieth century. Today farming resurges as young farmers, both idealistic and pragmatic, produce fresh vegetables, organic meats and flowers. We watch for chickens on the road.
Each spring we’re surprised by another hillside converted to trees. It seems a good use of land, but lately, I’m wondering: does the wind carry pesticides?
I spent the first years of my life in Washington State, adjacent to the Hanford Atomic Energy Plant, and as an adult learned of the government’s systematic release of plutonium. The soil I lived on was contaminated, and now I think inevitably of what soil carries, hoping the ground beneath my feet is waste free. Do the fertilizers pass right into the waters of the Roe Jan Kill?
When I was a teenager in Alabama we wore flats, low-heeled soft shoes with closed toes. Dirt gathered between our toes anyway. On torpid days, we hiked up our dresses to wash our feet under the outside spigot. Cold water restored us. Soils of Alabama are memory-soaked for me. Why not the soil that now surrounds me? Perhaps its closeness inhibits the proliferation of meaning, brings me face to face with present environmental dangers.
When we first moved here I feared power lines proposed along the Hudson River, an extension of my nuclear childhood brought forward to this moment. I sat on the steps watching our daughter play, and feared we’d made a terrible mistake. Now I read Little House on the Prairie to our granddaughters, Alice and Emily, and as tractors cut down corn behind our house, imagine Alfonso Wilder moving across nineteenth century America, clearing trees, cutting stumps, making homes for his wife and daughters.
I look for beauty, hold splendor up against the dark. Copake, the town where we live, declined as dairy farming became unprofitable, but in the past months citizens are rebuilding the general store, creating a hub for development--a renaissance. I helped wash a kitchen wall; my husband scrubbed a freezer door.
But I’m drifting.
Is the land we come to inhabit always an overlay to the soils of our pasts? Ground cover on the bottomlands of childhood? We’re destined to navigate time and space. The baby searches the mother’s face, and with a gaze, bridges the distance. The toddler circles back and forth between the playground and mother on the bench.
My mother waited in a Yakima apartment for Daddy to return from Hanford on his off days. Holding me distractedly, she watched the street. I followed her gaze as it shifted from me to my father. She drifted from my care to missing her own mother and sisters in Alabama.
Mother yearned for a rock to lean into, a God who would not turn away, an ever-present holy spirit to live inside her. I long for that which is not present, hoping to pull the contents of memory close. Yet, like a girl scrubbing off dirt on a hot day, I wash in the spigot of time, hoping to shed the past, but memories stick to my skin, layer upon layer turning to epidermis.
Across geography, I yearn to carry all I have loved. I wait for old men to gather for coffee at the Copake store, and as yips of coyotes drift down the mountains, I’m leaving the bedroom windows open.
by Cecele Kraus
In one curve of the road Christmas trees dominate. In another, bare birches punctuate the landscape. Rising like loaves of bread in this New York corridor between the Taconic Ridge and the Hudson River, these hills are the site of Shagbark Farm, once a Dutch colonial home and now headquarters for a tree industry. My husband and I live eleven minutes from the nearest grocery, and though the two-lane highway is quicker I prefer the dips and rises of the ridge roads. Stands of trees proliferate--shades, evergreens, ornamental and fruit trees, boxwoods, dwarfs, conifers and viburnum. Species blocked off like segregated neighborhoods take over pastures and sloped hills.
In spring hydrangeas pink the vistas. Trees bred into twisted branches sloop toward the ground like animated film characters about to come to life; their drooping shapes appear designed for mourning. We bought a house in Columbia County when our children were little and moved here when they were in college. It is a county shaped by entrepreneurial ambition. In the 1600s, the Livingston family purchased its southern half from the Mohicans and hired indentured Dutch immigrants. The immigrants refused to pay taxes and gained ownership of land. Dairy farms proliferated and then declined in the first half of the twentieth century. Today farming resurges as young farmers, both idealistic and pragmatic, produce fresh vegetables, organic meats and flowers. We watch for chickens on the road.
Each spring we’re surprised by another hillside converted to trees. It seems a good use of land, but lately, I’m wondering: does the wind carry pesticides?
I spent the first years of my life in Washington State, adjacent to the Hanford Atomic Energy Plant, and as an adult learned of the government’s systematic release of plutonium. The soil I lived on was contaminated, and now I think inevitably of what soil carries, hoping the ground beneath my feet is waste free. Do the fertilizers pass right into the waters of the Roe Jan Kill?
When I was a teenager in Alabama we wore flats, low-heeled soft shoes with closed toes. Dirt gathered between our toes anyway. On torpid days, we hiked up our dresses to wash our feet under the outside spigot. Cold water restored us. Soils of Alabama are memory-soaked for me. Why not the soil that now surrounds me? Perhaps its closeness inhibits the proliferation of meaning, brings me face to face with present environmental dangers.
When we first moved here I feared power lines proposed along the Hudson River, an extension of my nuclear childhood brought forward to this moment. I sat on the steps watching our daughter play, and feared we’d made a terrible mistake. Now I read Little House on the Prairie to our granddaughters, Alice and Emily, and as tractors cut down corn behind our house, imagine Alfonso Wilder moving across nineteenth century America, clearing trees, cutting stumps, making homes for his wife and daughters.
I look for beauty, hold splendor up against the dark. Copake, the town where we live, declined as dairy farming became unprofitable, but in the past months citizens are rebuilding the general store, creating a hub for development--a renaissance. I helped wash a kitchen wall; my husband scrubbed a freezer door.
But I’m drifting.
Is the land we come to inhabit always an overlay to the soils of our pasts? Ground cover on the bottomlands of childhood? We’re destined to navigate time and space. The baby searches the mother’s face, and with a gaze, bridges the distance. The toddler circles back and forth between the playground and mother on the bench.
My mother waited in a Yakima apartment for Daddy to return from Hanford on his off days. Holding me distractedly, she watched the street. I followed her gaze as it shifted from me to my father. She drifted from my care to missing her own mother and sisters in Alabama.
Mother yearned for a rock to lean into, a God who would not turn away, an ever-present holy spirit to live inside her. I long for that which is not present, hoping to pull the contents of memory close. Yet, like a girl scrubbing off dirt on a hot day, I wash in the spigot of time, hoping to shed the past, but memories stick to my skin, layer upon layer turning to epidermis.
Across geography, I yearn to carry all I have loved. I wait for old men to gather for coffee at the Copake store, and as yips of coyotes drift down the mountains, I’m leaving the bedroom windows open.