November 9, 2024
When we were kids, we were surrounded by aunts and uncles and 150 acres of pastures, old growth forest and a pond. The massive 200-year-old hemlock trees that dwelled in the forest, created a closed canopy and very little light ever reached the ground. There wasn’t much underbrush except for spring ephemerals, ferns and the occasional grape vine which somehow found its way up and through to the daylight above. The vines were as thick as a horse’s mane and if we held on tight, we could ride them back and forth, swinging a few inches off the forest floor. It was a deeply magical place to play and to grow up.
Forty years later, when the woolly adelgid arrived, the forest rapidly changed. We lost all the old hemlocks, and they fell like match sticks, scattered across the ground. Though I was still young enough to climb up and over the massive trunks - they were too big for my mom. Periodically we’d clear a path for her, so she could keep walking the trails that she had most every day of her 80 something years. It was an overwhelming task, because the instant the forest floor saw the light of day, multiflora rose and barbery filled in.
When her sister sold property to a developer we gave up. The developer was a hostile man who had bullied both my parents and made my mom cry. He told me once that he was going to build 7 houses on that land and threatened that if I didn’t back down and give him access across my property, he’d build 20 more.
A year or so before she died, my mom asked me if I could help her walk up to the pond one last time. I knew if the developer saw us that day, he’d give us a hard time, but I truly didn’t care.
I managed to get my mom up and over the half mile of fallen trees, through the brambles and underbrush and sat with her one last time by her beloved pond. Her short-term memory had been slipping for a while, but she easily recalled her youth. She described watching my grandmother’s team of horses dredging the pond. She talked about the Sunday picnics there when she was a kid, and camping out in the log cabin on the ridge above. She described Thanksgiving bonfires on the pond’s edge and skating there Christmas Day.
I had memories too, but I wasn’t into reminiscing - I just sat there next to her and fumed. The more she spoke and fondly remembered the more helpless and roiled I became. Perhaps if we had lost the land to a natural disaster, I would have been okay. But we lost it to a man who hated trees and only saw our family’s land as a cash transaction. He was a nasty, self-centered bully and I couldn’t bear it that he had won.
Rage seems to be my natural default setting and it seldom, if ever, simmers into sadness. My mom had loved that place for twice as long as I had and yet she easily found the peace which completely alluded me. Her sadness was quiet and gentle - and always infused with a deep sense of gratitude. She would say “But weren’t we lucky to have had it for so long?”
I wish now that I could have found a way to cast my bitterness aside and helped her enjoy just being there one last time. There are so many questions I could have asked her. Why did her mom dredge the pond - and did they do it every year? Who built the log cabin and how often did she get to sleep there?
I said goodbye to the woods, the hemlocks and the pond that day with bitterness twinged with hate. Though the man was ruthless, in the end the land won. There were access issues and drainage issues and ultimately only three house lots were approved. The remaining land, and the pond, ended up in the hands and good care of the Farmington Land Trust. Despite everything, it turned out okay in the end.
I learned so much from my mom while she was alive, but there is even more she could teach me now. I’ll walk up to the pond today and stand quietly on its murky edge. I’ll try to find my mom’s serenity and let go of the rage. “Yes indeed” I’ll tell her, “we have been very lucky to have had it for so long”