My first substantial departure from home was not, as I suspect it was for others, going off to college. Although Rochester and Woodstock are separated by seven hours of Thruway; college never felt, for me anyhow, "away from home". My fledgling event was breaking out of the Bearsville orbit, jettisoned really, and moving to San Francisco. I recall my first visits home and the first thing that felt askew was that the trees looked bigger. The trees near my home. The trees on the village green. It was if my departure had somehow furloughed the arborists of Ulster County. The basal area of my teenage habitat had become swollen with grand oaks and towering pines.
Almost 40 years since I first sat (here) at the bar at Manitou House; and the dominant organic landscape change is the forest. There is something to be learned here, but I'm not precisely sure what it is. Aphorisms like "Leave it alone and it will fix itself" come to mind. But the way things were are not by any decree, the way things are supposed to be.
All of which fuels my excitement about getting together tomorrow night with some who were among the local shrubbery of the 70s.
Andy on Tractor
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