Two young men showed up this morning to monitor our easement -- the 70-ish acres of land whose development rights we donated to Scenic Hudson. Mike, the main contact, is a tall thin guy, wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and good boots. With him is Dan, a volunteer who's apprenticing. He's shorter, more heavy set, holding a yellow GPS instrument. Both are, as one would expect, entirely pleasant and engaged in their work.
We walk up the path that Michael has mowed, going westward up the long hill. The goldenrod ruled this year, now all stalky and dry, but still lending a mellow yellow to the general space. A few milkweed are scattered through them, their satisfying pods split open and silken with seeds ready to take off. Passing over the hill, there is a sudden expansion of a lower field and a satisfying invasion of St. John's Wort, a plant that has some proven ability to reduce depression -- but perhaps because it's entire growing cycle provides pleasure -- from it's puffy yellow flowering in the summer to the phalanx of small, hard brown seeds that march up its stems in the fall.
The path forks into two directions: west and north. We turn right along the back edge of the field until we reach our neighbor's road, which borders the north side of our property. We follow it west beside a grove of pine trees and stop at the line between Olana and our property.
From there we retrace our route back up the road and across the field to the original fork in the path; there we turn right and head south to end of the path, where we break through the brush, grass, and bushes to check our little pond, which was originally dug to catch run-off from the apple orchards. When we first bought the land, Michael could mow all around it, but the pipe that drained off the water from the surrounding hills had collapsed and the area has become too swampy. For a couple of years, I had cleared out some of the brush around the pond and planted iris and day lilies, but it was too tough to maintain. Now the pond is basically inaccessible but still a great landing spot for heron and a breeding ground for frogs.
As we push back through the grass, I ask Mike and Dan if they get bitten by deer ticks. Mike says he's just recovering from Lyme disease and Dan had it earlier. We all stop and check ourselves and Mike shakes off two ticks.
Back on the path, we head up to the highest spot, my favorite place, which opens to the Catskills on the West and the Berkshires to the East. I can sit up there and meditate, do yoga, or just veg out. In the summer, the neighboring house is blocked by trees and I figure I could go naked if I wanted.
We head back and across the upper field toward the site on the south side of the property, where we will be allowed to build, if that's what we decide to do. There's too much brush (and probably too many ticks) to fight our way through to get any sense of the site itself, so we head back to the barn, where I'm able to unload my last two pumpkins on the boys before they head off. They approve of our ideas for a house and say they enjoyed walking our land. This is the first step.
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