A reflection on the newest chapter in Troutbeck’s story
(A concerned neighbor writes in the spirit of Lewis and Sophie Mumford, Myron and Marianna Benton, Joel and Amy Spingarn, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and many more.)
For many in life there will come one time;
a moment, a crossroads, that itself defines
how we are remembered throughout the ages.
For most of us that history is small
and soon forgotten to the past,
but on the newest chapter in Troutbeck’s story
history will shine it’s honest light, and forever
allow our children’s children and great-grandchildren
to vividly see, with clarity,
how in that moment we chose to write,
forever, our family’s legacy.
I’ll echo Lewis Mumford’s prescient words
who spoke of Troutbeck’s timelessness being freed
from the city’s urgency (and carelessness).
He eloquently wrote of the spirit of a place
that has, since Caleb Benton’s time,
linked families to that soil and land
and for generations has inspired
the continuation of a collaboration
between the world of nature and the spirit of man.
With learned insight he hoped that reverence
would for centuries to come rise up
and protect those glens from greedy plans
for development and parking lots.
If you own a manor with history profound,
before you move to defile that hallowed ground,
(where Sinclair Lewis and Mark Twain both
spent days of quiet leisure)
sit down, alone, with a quiet mind,
(as did John Burroughs and Myron Benton)
and there beside that lovely stream
(so admired by Emerson and Thoreau)
open your hearts and embrace the past
in a spirit of introspection,
and before becoming historic villains
first contemplate those unspoiled fields
and that wooded mountain.
That majestic mountain, eons old,
stands a silent monument
to those men of fame who nature so adored,
who fought to stay the selfish hand of man
and the earth’s destruction did abhor
and did shield that ancient hunting ground
held sacred by true native clans
from the soulless excavators wanton claw
and the bellowing bulldozers gaping maw.
James Robertson Paton
Amenia
