The agricultural side of my Upstate NY family (Dryden) were rock farmers, the
land unfit for most anything but the growing of rocks.

My mother was recently telling me, on a walk along a remote section of the
Erie Canal, how during the depression a great number of hilltop farms were
abandoned and taken over for state land. Many of them were also hard up for
tough weather and often for water. My grandmother, raised in Dryden, knew
where these farms were. When I was a kid I would go with my mother and
grandmother out on back roads and visit sites to pick quince, blueberries,
raspberries, pears, plums and apples. The family treasure of flowers and
ornamental shrubbery has been supplemented by years of such foraging (along
with my grandmother's night raiding of the botanic gardens in Washington). My
interest in wildflowers and foraging comes from these adventures.

On all of the farm sites there would be run down buildings, collapsed barns,
houses with no roofs, no paint, leaning off to one side. Whenever I tour an
empty building, such as the New Amsterdam Theater at a stage prior to Disney,
I am reminded of exploring these abandonded structures. For me the most
significant aspect of the explorations was wondering who had built them and
what sort of lives they had lived.

][<en

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