Villages

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. ~Henry David Thoreau



History books recount the tales of how the world's great cities took shape, how men with vision came in and swept whole sections of countryside clean of vegetation and wildlife in the name of progress. In other cases, the sprawl happened gradually, with cities extending their reach until it was impossible to even guess at what had been there before. In both cases, architects, engineers and builders painted over nature's great canvas, obliterating her work for all time in places such as New York City, Chicago and Boston. Yes, the city planners incorporated parks and other green places in their sprawling cities for residents to enjoy. But there is no question that nature has taken a back seat in many areas of this country, and one is hard-pressed to find her in any but the least-populated places.

Thanks to citizen resistance to sprawl and development, nature maintains her hold on the vast spaces that exist between the smaller towns and among the great swatches of terrain that divide them. Two years ago, the residents of Shapleigh voted against a company that had plans to test, tap and sell the town's water, thus ensuring that no bottling plant, such as the one that now takes up a huge area on the Killock Pond Road in Hollis, would suddenly pop up on their own pristine land. To economists and others who insist on placing a dollar value on everything, this translated into lost jobs and lower revenues. But to naturalists and others who appreciate nature's presence, it was no small victory. For to drive through Shapleigh is to pass through a place of incredible beauty, from its gently rolling hills to its densely wooded areas. How sad it would have been to disturb that land for the purpose of extracting the very water that makes its lush existence possible.

Those who choose to live in small towns and villages do so from personal choice or, in some cases, because they've been there all their lives and it just never occurs to them to live anywhere else. There is an inherent sense of freedom in such places, where nature exists close by as a constant reminder that boundaries are a human convention and that no such concept exists naturally in woods and fields. Again, the open areas are preserved and left to their own devices, imparting to small settlements an aura of non-intrusiveness and resignation. Nature rules, and those who live in such places do so out of deference to her and with great respect for her processes. The appearance of wildlife in a rural back yard is an everyday occurrence in many small towns and is never an intrusion. There is an intrinsic acceptance among a populace that has learned to live in harmony with its wild neighbors that involves never forgetting who was here first.

It's always a pleasure to drive through the smaller towns and villages that dot the landscape away from the larger metropolitan areas. I never tire of seeing the family farms, weathered outbuildings, apple orchards and vast gardens coexisting with other modest homesteads and small businesses that know their place in the scheme of things and that keep the local humble economy going. The eye travels easily across such landscapes that offer few, if any, detractions to their flowing harmony. For mercifully, the human touch has been gentle and respectful in these places where nature's imprint is still the deepest.


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Summer in York County

Roaming the York County countryside means seeing fields shorn of their tall grasses and corn standing knee-high right about now. Raspberries are filling out on their canes, and blueberries are ripening a little more each day. Birds linger longer on tree branches, particularly among the flowering varieties whose blossoms have given way to yet another year's-worth of seeds. It's July, the seventh month, which means that we are over half-way through yet another year. The heat rests heavily on the land, and the sun shines down more intensely than it will at any other time.

I'm not a big fan of hot weather, so when I do venture out, I try to get as early a start as I can. Driving along with all the windows down, I bask in the still-cool morning air that, by noon, will feel more like the heat pouring from an oven. On hot days, even the trees seem weighed down by it, their leaves barely moving in the moisture-laden air moving in from the south and the west, completely resigned to the elements that constitute summer in southern Maine.

Much has been written of late about conservation and the actions of many dedicated individuals geared toward protecting unspoiled land for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. While their efforts are indeed commendable, it occurs to me that conservation can take different forms and that it can be deliberate or simply the result of of land being left undisturbed for many years. The long swaths of open field and meadow that I see in my many travels illustrate what I like to call passive conservation. Such acreage emerges from beneath the snows each spring, sprouts a full component of grass that is eventually cut back to ground level. That is about as much as ever happens to such land, and year after year, it is wisely left in nature's domain. The hay or straw harvested from these lands fills many needs, but such undisturbed lands provide another benefit as well by enhancing the countryside and making a lot of lovely scenery possible. Visual beauty, as well as the survival of relatively untouched places, are indeed valuable components of conservation, passive or otherwise, that sometimes get lost in the shuffle of providing areas for people to enjoy in other ways.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to those landowners who quietly, and without much ado, leave large portions of their land in nature's care. Because of them, we have many places to escape to in this part of the world where life's busy-ness and the wilderness live in close proximity to each other. And although much of this land is private and, in some cases, posted against trespassers, I feel that just having it to look at as I drive by or stop along a road somewhere to enjoy is a gift.

I sometimes park my car and walk along the by-ways that border such properties, camera in hand, always on the lookout for that special something that would be missed if I'd just passed by without a second glance. From such a limited vantage point, I am still able to gaze out upon rolling pastures and deep into dense woods where the leaves split the sunlight into glimmering beams. I can gaze down from a bridge into flowing water or look up at clouds that break up a rich blue sky above a field of golden grasses bending in the breeze, thankful always to those wise landowners who know that, when nature is given full rein, nothing short of the spectacular will do.


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