Requiem for a Field

There’s a field along my route in a town not far from where I live, a place where I’ve always watched the seasons change. First a snowy expanse, next a field with mud puddles, progressing to a newly planted cornfield, then a field of tall corn waiting for harvest, and in fall, a field left with a stubble of cornstalks.

 As that cornfield evolved through the summer, I would watch its progress from May through September. As the corn grew and the symmetry of its rows shimmered in the heat of the August sun, deer might be visible from the road as I passed, or turkeys gleaning insects and corn that had dropped to the ground during harvest. On clear nights, the moon, stars and northern lights provided the only illumination. As winter approached again, geese flew over in raucous V’s.

Then suddenly, all that changed. The owners of the field, who were not from here, sold it to be used as the site of a big box store. The sale meant the death of the field. Corn no longer grows there. I’m not sure who planted the silage corn, perhaps the family-operated dairy right across the way, victim of escalating land values, rising costs, and decreasing milk prices.

Now the field waits. It waits for planning boards and corporations; it waits for excavators and bulldozers; it waits for star-obscuring bright lights and security guards; it waits for pavers and for the shoppers who will inevitably arrive.

This field lies near a river. A river that at one time allowed silt to build up on an ancient floodplain. When Native Americans traveled on the river highways, they used this open space as a stop-off point to camp, hunt and fish. When European settlers came along, they cut the trees and pulled or burned the stumps to begin farming in the river valley. These intrusions on the land provided shelter and food to ensure their families’ survival. And the land gave.

Although corn no longer grows there, the field still provides a quiet, constantly changing beauty. In the spring, the field was green with grasses and sparkled with wildflowers. Now, in mid-summer, it stands poised to explode into the brilliant fireworks of goldenrod and purple New England asters. Deer still appear, turkeys roam, hawks soar and circle over a pastiche of emerald and constantly changing color, not far from a river just out of sight to humans, but known to the deer, turkeys and hawks. The river is their life force, providing them with water without which they couldn’t exist, close to the field in which they forage.

I will miss this field. The heat from blacktopped parking lots, neatly planted with trees that will never mature, and the bright lights that will block out the Aurora Borealis will never replace the spirit of that field.

As we humans travel through this valley, the natural beauty of the foothills of the White Mountains overwhelms us. The opportunity to watch a natural place through its changing seasons, a place where no one has built or paved or changed the topography, is increasingly rare. These types of spaces are endangered. They’re why I live here. They’re what give this valley its beauty and uniqueness. People travel from major cities to see them.

Such irrevocable changes in the nature of the land result from the decisions of a few. The ties we forge with our past are the ties that help us see the future. What do you want to see?

By Helen Downing, Master Gardener, UNH Cooperative Extension

08/03/06

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