Country

Spring!

The stream isn’t frozen over.

An abandoned place on Gulf Road – occupied until last year.

Crocuses at Peter and Aviva’s!  We saw them Sunday, purple and gold, poking up through the leaf mold in the warming sun.  There are more and more signs of spring in the longer days.  Loads of deer come down to the road to forage where the snow has melted.  We see more turkeys, and yesterday, a possum.  The snow is in retreat everywhere.  The trees are bare – no more snow on their branches. The snow melts a little in the sun each day and refreezes overnight. In the morning it shines with a glossy crust, firm enough that Charlie can walk on top of it, only breaking through once in a while.  There’s plenty of exposed grass around the house for him to sniff, but he likes to cross the snow to get to the compost pile where the smells are better.  Jay points out that we can tell the snow isn’t so deep any more because the piles of horse poop in Zen’s field are visible again, little brown islands in the white sea.  Knowing that the snow will be gone soon, I find myself holding on to its beauty – in the morning light and evening light especially, and even at night, glowing under the waxing moon.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how life is different in a place so sparsely populated, a place of small towns and farms and open country.  The first big impacts on me have been visual – being able to see a long way, seeing so much of the natural world, seeing such a big sky.  Even the man made things look different, because there is often a lot of space around them. It isn’t a long row of houses, it’s a house, and then a house, and then a house.  It’s easier to see them, and to think about when they were built and how they are inhabited and cared for now, or how they are suffering the decline of a sagging porch and peeling paint.

The economy is more visible in a place like this too.  When we buy eggs from Richard Manley down Gulf Road, he has a little money to feed his hens. When we eat at the Hartwick Restaurant, Silvio has a little money to put toward his electric bill.  When we buy bread at Schneider Bakery in Cooperstown they can pay Adele to work there and she can pay her rent.  It’s easier to see how the money circulates here where there is so much less of it.  It’s more obvious what has to be imported from outside the region and what very few things are exported (please buy Chobani yougurt!).  Soon, the tourists will come and spend money they’ve earned elsewhere.  They’ll put their coins in the parking meters and pay for our road repairs. They’ll keep shops and restaurants and hotels alive and employing local people for another year.

The social relationships are more visible too.  We went to a bluegrass concert at the Otesaga hotel (a beauty built in 1909) with Peter and Aviva on Sunday night.  We ran into Jim Hill, who Jay has chatted with in the locker room at the pool, who runs the concert series.  We ran into Geegee, Peter and Aviva’s 90 year old former neighbor.  Peter and Aviva sat up front, but we sat further back.  A woman walked into the row in front of us and was hailed by the women sitting next to me, “Hi Lorna!” At a break in their conversation I asked, “Are you the Lorna who lives next to Peter and Aviva on the lake?”  She was.  How many Lornas could there be in Cooperstown?  We’re invited out to see the house she just finished building and to try out her hot tub. Before the concert, during intermission, and when the concert ends, the room is buzzing with the greetings of friends and neighbors. The weekly paper carries a piece about the rental market by Adrian Kuzminski who we met at Peter and Aviva’s.  It occurs to me that there are fewer people in Cooperstown than there are members of Beth Am.  The relationships are dense, and often generational, as at Beth Am.

At the gym, I hear frequent greetings to and from people returning from Florida or Georgia.  They’ve come home in time to see the last of the snow and to start planning their gardens.  Back in their web of friendships, they are spending money here again – Social Security checks, retirement savings – putting a little spring into the economy.  Their houses have smoke coming out of chimneys again, their driveways are plowed.  They return to grandchildren, or have said goodbyes to grandchildren. They watch Venus follow the sun down in the west and look up at brilliant Jupiter in the dark sky. They seem glad to be back home.