The following photos were taken at Jensen’s Ledges.
the same photo, the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue. Same shot yet each of 4,000 images is also different. What would happen if -- for five days at 1:00 p.m. -- I step out our back door to walk the same loop across our backyard, up the hill past the gardens, into the woods, toward the mountain stream, then circle back home wide through the forest? DAY ONE Bright sun, gentle wind. In a light‑ weight down jacket, I vault with one hand on the stone wall up into the backyard and head up to the flowerbed. No pops of bright color. The bed’s railroad-tie border, stiff grass underfoot, the bark of every tree swaying ahead at the edge of the woods...all of it is a palette of brown and gray. These are the hues of dormancy and suspension except on the flank of deer that frolic and feed in the evening. *** Up the hill and across the driveway is the fenced-in vegetable garden. A jungle of weeds, dry and dead now, overcame the beds last August when we opted to frequent the Callicoon Farmers’ Market instead of growing our own vegetables. The sight floods me with child‑
hood memories of our Memorial Day planting ritual. My father with spade and mother with hoe dig trenches. My sister and I on our knees sow and fertilize seeds that transform into tomatoes and cukes, carrots and beets and always too-many zucchini. The bounty we transform again into salads, relish and pickles for the pantry. October brings the bookend ritual. Frost will come in the night warns my mother. My sister and I yank withered vines out of the soil and shuttle bushel baskets of squash and pumpkins to the back basement. In the toasty kitchen, Mom makes us Breakfast for Dinner! -- fried eggs and chocolate chip pancakes. *** Scaling a gentle slope up the hill toward the woods, light exertion, and brisk clean air expand lungs and mind. Crisp brown leaves and sun-bleached grass cuttings camou‑ flage loamy ground. Earth beneath my boots gives way. The sensation of sinking and slipping in mud is familiar. Joyful feet proclaim Spring is here! DAY TWO Beneath an ash-gray sky, I reach the grassy plateau near the top of the hill just before the loop turns into woods. An uprooted tree, Jeffersonville Journal ‑ 47
thick-trunked and as tall as two telephone poles, rests precariously on two other trees bent on a sharp angle under the weight. A ‘widowmaker’ I’ve been told this kind of woodland hazard is called. Ice, wind or both must have downed the tree. The rootball is on the neighbor’s side of the property line while the stressed trees curl and create a half canopy over our property line. Their inevitable fall raises questions of property own‑ ership. Risks and responsibilities. Cleanup costs. Who, in the end, gets the firewood. My stomach knots. If a tree falls in the woods and neither I nor our friendly neighbor notice, can’t the whole situation just be ignored? Just ahead the loop follows a mown path that narrows into deep woods. A spacious grove of bare trees makes me nostalgic for a time thousands of years ago. I imagine hunters and gatherers draped in fur and carrying bows and knives prowling among these trees. The hunt for bear or deer means everyone -- or no one -- will feast. Before agrarian society ushered in the idea of ‘ownership’ -- as a means of maintaining privilege and power -- humans had little or no framework for borders or belong‑
