So here I am on this day of giving thanks, walking along the familiar shores of the Ashokan Reservoir with my mountain watching me. Today her imposing body stretches out like an immoveable mass of ancient rock formation, solid and strong. But on other days my silent observer becomes a moving river, fluid and gentle. My eyes trace the familiar outline of this beloved mountain, aware that both its solidity and fluidity have so much to teach me, and on this day of thanksgiving, I pause to offer abundant gratitude for its existence in my life.
I used to wonder, as one might with certain close friends, whether I chose High Point as my familiar or if she chose me. Now, after decades of full and fruitful kinship, I feel that we have mutually chosen each other, for at its most essential, friendship is shared presence sustained over time. Surely the potent exchange that creates the lineage of any significant relationship is as mysterious with a mountain as it is with a person. And how blessed is the person who can count among their allies some aspect of the landscape. Let us be grateful then, for that river or tree, that rocky ledge or creature that witnesses our life, offering comfort and joy.
December
Mountain Coming
To Rest in Motion
Just home from a conference and meetings in Washington D.C., I am exhausted, over stimulated, and too full. For me there is only one cure: I need to walk in open space.
Ancient peoples believed that the mountains steadied the earth and held it together. Today as I follow the Ashokan Way, I am certain that the Catskills hold me together. And while the landscape’s solidity holds me, the reservoir’s waves rock me. My brain feels like an overloaded filing cabinet with the extra files spilling out of my head, tumbling behind me in chaotic heaps. Meanwhile, my footsteps speak: Breathe, empty, space. Breathe, empty, space. Breathe, empty, space.
I listen to my footsteps’ counsel and I understand that my challenge is not to eliminate all of the busyness in my life, but rather to empty myself in the midst of the fullness. The I Ching’s fifty-second hexagram is Ken, the mountain majestically moving above and massively still below. The hexagram is described this way; “Ken mountain means coming to rest in motion. When the proper interplay of stillness and action is understood and practiced, the path for progress is bright and glorious.” Observing High Point, I see that the peak surrounded by clouds is moving toward heaven while the immense base is the definition of solid motionlessness, earth itself. I long to pull my living mountain inside me so that I might inhabit its balance of action and stillness, heaven and earth.
Ancient wisdom keepers believed that we could better understand the fundamental principles of life when in the presence of a mountain landscape, and this has been true for me. This outer mountain is always ready to help me find my inner mountain. Each day when I leave my office bound up in details and endless lists of things to do, feeling almost buried alive under a torrent of e-mails, I walk into a place that allows me to be empty. For me, this open space is one of the few forces potent enough to overcome the hungry ghosts of modern technological distraction. The landscape returns me to my own inner search engine, reminding me that this interior inquiry is where the roots of my human condition exist. This land reminds me that a computer can never accomplish my internal quest.
Not only does this mountain valley embody the rest in motion that I need, but also it radically alters my sense of time, space, and self. Out here in the open, I feel and sense and think in a different way. Who cares about the minutiae of today’s ever-so-important To-do lists when I am surrounded by a landscape formed three hundred million years ago, a place where dinosaurs roamed among primordial plants and massive ice flows carved out mountains as a lasting record of their existence? And here I am, strolling through this valley that silently holds all the memories of past, present, and the eventual future. The long body of this place is humbling, putting all my lists of things to do in their proper perspective. Walking inside this ancient lineage, I will soon find my balance of stillness and action.
The further I go along the Ashokan Way, the more I reside within my inner mountain. All the while, like a giant pitcher of light, this bright day pours its sunshine over the valley’s hollows and ridges. It pours and pours its abundant light over me, too. A red-tailed hawk flies just above me, its feathered pattern an intricate mosaic illuminated by the sun. Its strong wings beat away my sense of being overloaded. Higher and higher it soars, way up into all that endless space. My footsteps are nimbler and I feel, for now at least, that I have become the mountain, coming to rest in motion.
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Ghosts and Voices
Haunt this Place
After the rain, it’s a warm and misty day as shrouds of fog gently settle in the basins of this mountain valley. Like lazy giants, my towering companions are stretched out before me. Mountains from the Burroughs Range—Slide, Cornell, and the Wittenberg—rest next to Lone, Balsam Cap, Rocky, Friday, and Table from the neighboring Bushwack Range. Over the years, David and I have hiked many of these peaks, and they feel like old friends. Along the eagle’s peninsula where bald eagles have nested for many years, bare, white birch trees form the boney spine of the forest. Just a few geese still linger on the Ashokan this late in the year before honking off and heading south. On the water the mists are rising up now, following the geese. I am here alone today with all of this silent beauty.
Intoxicated by the untamed loveliness, it’s easy to forget that the Ashokan’s twelve-mile stretch of open water was artificially created to supply water to one of the world’s largest cities. And it’s convenient to disregard the thousands of people who had to give up their homes to make way for this reservoir. Most days when I walk here I don’t think about these truths, buried in the past as they are. But on some mornings when shrouds of mist mingle with the white bones of trees, the ghosts and voices that haunt this landscape walk right next to me. The people who lived in the towns underneath this place start telling me their stories.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, representatives of the City of New York arrived in the small town of Ashokan to plan for construction of a great dam on the Esopus Creek at Olive Bridge. Called the last of the handmade dams, the concrete structure was part of the Ashokan Reservoir project, a multimillion-dollar endeavor that forever changed this valley’s way of life as well as the shape of its land. New York—the fastest growing city in America at the time—was in what was then called a water famine, and the city’s power brokers were ready to do anything to alleviate the dire situation. A private company, the Ramapo Water Company, was formed by the most influential politicians from both parties in the state legislature. This coalition eventually secured a power far wider than those of local municipalities, enabling it to obtain the water rights throughout the state of New York. The Ramapo water company acquired the water rights to build the Ashokan reservoir by simply filing plans with the local county clerk. The rural people of this valley didn’t stand a chance against the powerful political interests of such an urban force and soon anger, resentment, and fear thickened the air.
By 1908 the sleepy village of Ashokan had become a modern town supporting the construction of the dam. More than three thousand workers lived on the slope of Winchell Hill at Brown’s Station, the encampment built for the laborers.
There were three schools, three churches, numerous brothels, a small hospital, a police station, a firehouse, and a bakery that produced five thousand loaves of bread a day. Widely diverse peoples co-existed; Italians, Irish, African-Americans, Russians, Poles, Swedes, Austrians, and Germans were all part of the mix. Many of the immigrants didn’t speak any English. At night along with the infamous brawls, cockfights, and mule chariot races, one smelled cuisine and heard music from multiple corners of the globe.
But this colorful multinational encampment was not where the tragedy lived. Ordered by New York City to sell their land, many of the residents of the Town of