‘All the old friends’

Each October my friend Becky and I take a morning to visit the fall wildflowers. “All the old friends”—the ladies’ tresses (a slender, wild orchid with a pungent, spicy fragrance), the deep blue bottled gentian and dry, wooly pearly everlasting. Stiff gentian, rarer locally than the bottled species, was thriving this year along the moist banks of Peas Eddy Road in Hancock, NY.

Becky and I watched the glimmering leaves in the shifting, autumn light and waded through the tangle of asters and goldenrod. Who says nature doesn’t do “day-glo?” When I was a kid, my mother always looked for the pink-orange leaves—leaves that could almost be called “flamingo”. These were her favorite. And, sometimes you see them—almost—on the brilliant, feathery flames of the staghorn sumac.

Becky took photographs. I picked one of the ladies’ tresses to bring home.

These flowers have survived the turmoil and resulting roadwork of the ‘06 flood. While some species were shifted to new spots, others were brought in with new fill and still others seem to have vanished. We haven’t seen the fringed gentian, another variety with bright blue, ragged blooms, in its usual place in Rock Valley since the flood.

This year along Peas Eddy, which parallels the East Branch of the Delaware, we also saw an eagle. And there was an old spring running out of the bank like a drinking fountain. A couple of mugs were sitting nearby, presumably for the thirsty.

It is worth noting that Peters’ farm, located nearby on Peas Eddy Road, is listed by the DEC as one of the first sites for potential gas drilling in the town of Hancock.

I have yet to sign a lease with any gas company on the small, 200-acre farm I own with my sisters. I probably won‘t do so. We weren’t asked by the now notorious landsmen until much later, which has made our consideration of this decision that much easier in some ways. Still, our farm would most likely be included in any state “compulsory integration unit” created for neighboring wells. There could be drilling under my land whether I like it or not. Last year, we signed on with a local group of landowners who are negotiating the terms of a potential lease. Of course, there’s safety in numbers and we want the best information available. I’m friends with people who have signed and people who haven’t. And I hate to see them divided. It’s not a black or white issue.

In fact, I’d like to see local people who signed get rich and go driving around with cattle horns on the hoods of their pick-ups (and new Cadillacs). But I’m not sure it’s ever going to work out that way—and at what price, considering the sketchy regulations currently proposed? Local and regional gas drilling may be inevitable, but it shouldn’t have to cost us our water, our health, or our local landscape.

Meanwhile, the seasons turn as ever, bringing another old friend: Halloween. My kids are picking out costumes and pumpkins and gracefully warty gourds. Each year they attend the costume parade through the village of Hancock, sponsored by the PTA. The Drumm family spends weeks transforming their home into a haunted house for us all to traipse though, complete with fortune telling gypsies, the grim reaper and his cronies.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

My daughter, Lily, who is seven, says she will be a “candy corn witch.” Yesterday, she was going to be an “autumn wood fairy” that she saw in a catalog. She is missing one of her front teeth, which I think gives her an edge on the witch costume. We call her “Lil’o lantern” which is met with the usual groans, threats and hitting. My son, Sam, who is 11, says he‘ll most likely be a vampire. The tried and true. Happy Halloween!