A Grandfather Explains Himself

Reasons for Sticking Around

Photo by Désirée Krennrich on Unsplash

I was recently asked to explain why I've lived in the same place -- New York's Hudson Valley -- for nearly 50 years.

I could only think to answer the question in the guise I'm most familiar with: as a grandfather. Should one of my five grandkids ever wonder why the doddering old guy who can’t seem to remember their birthday is so interested in explaining himself, I’d say this: the Hudson Valley is crawling with history. Folks around here value old things, I'd tell them.

Old things like grandfathers, for example.

And trees.

We live in New Paltz, a small college town. Half a mile from our home is Huguenot Street, which calls itself the oldest street in America. You'll find the names of the country's earliest Europe-fleeing (White) founding fathers carved into the worn headstones that dot the quaint Huguenot cemetery. The street reeks of pre-colonial American history, carefully preserved, endlessly and rather selectively extolled. (Let's not talk about the distasteful matter of slavery, shall we?)

The even-older grandfathers of the valley -- the natives who were displaced by the European invaders -- have suffered the tragic fate suffered by countless grandfathers across the land who spoke neither Dutch nor English and whose histories can only be guessed at today. I hope my will remember those ancient grandfathers as well as the ones who "conquered" them.

I was surprised recently to learn that, contrary to my imaginings, the Hudson Valley is a lot more verdant now than it used to be. All those White grandfathers, intent on making a living in the New Land, created industries that employed other grandfathers intent on raising families in every corner of the valley.

So it was that the laid-back, boho-friendly town of Rosendale, a few miles north of New Paltz, was once a smoky, dusty company town whose only product was a naturally occurring cement that was torn from the surrounding mountains, then toasted in local kilns, hauled by wagon down rutted dirt roads to the Hudson River from whence it was unloaded downstate, finally mixed with water and used to create the most amazing and enduring structures – the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge -- that New York City has ever seen.

Rosendale Cement was a great discovery whose production supported many families, until it didn't, until Rosendale Cement went the way of the ice houses on the Hudson and the bluestone cutters in Kingston and the brick-makers of Saugerties.

This phenomenon is usually described as “progress,” though, having seen my own grandfathers displaced and saddened by the passing of their respective occupations (the railroads and small-time shopkeeping) and having lived on the brink of another dying industry (newspapers) I can think of choicer terms than “progress” to describe the phenomenon.

The cost of all this industrialization, wasn't much appreciated back then. The cost was the countryside itself. The valley's first-growth forest was among the earliest victims of its settlers' needs. Vast swaths of land were cleared of primeval forests to make room for dairy farms that thrived until they didn't, until their rolling acres were sold off to provide patchworks of five-acre plots on which were planted not resurgent forests but squat, lonely-looking things called McMansions, visual afflictions which Malvina Reynolds, were she alive today, might write a cheerfully mordant song about.

The forests may have been under siege, but thanks to the rise of the environmental movement (which was birthed at nearby Storm King Mountain when I was Grandson Number Two's age (12, I think)) my valley is greener today than it was a hundred years ago. The Hudson Valley has become the sworn enemy of corporate invaders eager to fill its hills and valleys with cheapjack chain stores and sprawling condos. The valley is still full of trees, and not so full of WalMarts and Holiday Inns, as many corporate plunderers have discovered to their chagrin.

Which brings us to trees.

I learned to appreciate trees by growing up in suburban South Buffalo, NY where the only trees I knew -- American elms -- stood in small, polite rows in front of newly built, post-war "starter homes" that lined the street I grew up on. Every autumn the leaves on those trees turned a crinkly brown and dropped like a plague of dead locusts to the street below.

The city made sure the trees were stripped of their lowest branches, the better to keep young people grounded. Mostly, trees just got in the way of summertime fly balls and footballs on the streets below.

Cut to the late 1970s. Only a few months after our arrival in the Hudson Valley, I discovered how, come September, the lush green leaves of maple and oak and birch and willow that were everywhere in the valley turned every color but locust-brown.

Trees may not always be a kids’ friend. But even when they seem to revolt, when their storm-tossed branches come crashing down in the backyard, their apparent betrayal is only temporary. I’d tell my grandkids trees will still welcome you with dappled sunlight in your shared springtime. They’ll let you crawl through their limbs and dangle from their highest reaches as you age. And even as they grow old and creak in the winter wind and finally crash to earth, as you will one day do, they're worth hanging around for. You’ll find it difficult to leave.

Should they ever ask, I’ll tell them trees are a gift. They’re there for you, no questions asked, just as my grandfathers were there for me, as I am there for you now, even if I don't always remember your birthday.