Ecoduction

I was born in the Southwest of the United States and I find myself, now, in the Northeast. I’ve lived in New Mexico, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. The last three all share borders, water, and trees. In those three northeastern states, if you leave a bag of chips open, they will go stale. In New Mexico, I could leave my bag of blue corn chips open for a week and they would be crisp as the day I bought them, perhaps even crisper. When I moved across the country, I met mosquitoes and ticks and poison ivy. I met the ocean. I met mud season and sleet season. I met trees that turned different colors in the Fall. I went to a school with Ski Fridays–we got out of school early on Friday and went to Butternut, eating cold Starbursts as our feet dangled off the chairlifts. I played lacrosse and went apple picking. I learned how to sail. I met investment bankers on Wall Street and lived in the suburbs and had an app on my phone with the Metro North schedule. I felt the vortex of Manhattan suck me in, and then I pushed my way out four years later. I wanted rhythm, not chaos. I landed two hours north in Ghent, NY. 

Two hours from my old apartment in the East Village. Two hours from my mom’s house in Fairfield, CT. And 30 minutes from

4 Avery Lane 

Great Barrington, MA 01230

the house I lived in from third grade to eighth grade.

When people ask me how I like the Hudson Valley, I say that I’ve clicked in. Not like a computer mouse click, more like a jigsaw piece snapping into place. I know what the grass tastes like here, and I know what it feels like to be digging down into the soil and hitting rock, after rock, after rock. I know it gets damp around here, and that my basil will inevitably get downy mildew. I know that melons are hard to grow here, again, it’s too wet. I know that most of the fields I see were once old growth forest. 

I know the two weeks in the spring when I can get ramps, that the second flush of strawberries are sweeter, and I really like winter squash. 

I want to be outside here. I want to partner with the cows and goats, with the chestnuts. With the squirrels and deer, with the lambs quarter and staghorn sumac. I want to be in this place long enough for it to become boring, and then exciting again.