My mother teaches at a public Middle School in The Bronx. If traffic isn’t heavy on I-684 and you make good time on the Hutch, then P.S. 83 is only fifty-five minutes away from John Jay High School, though the two schools might as well be in different countries or different planets. It seems almost unnecessary to point out that great inequities divide the two schools (policemen guard the entrance of one) and that still greater social and economic forces divide the two towns. That’s all true, but it’s not the whole story. It hit me when my mom’s students visited our house on Todd Road in Katonah. Our wooded forests and unkempt pond, teaming with tiny insects and leaches and mating frogs, enchanted the seventh-grade students, many of whom, before coming to Lewisboro, could not imagine the outdoors in terms more optimistic than rusty fences and oil-stained parking lots.
Mother Nature doesn’t hide very well in the town of Lewisboro; to find her, I need only to step out of my house. In a matter of moments I’m tromping in six acres of her woods: I travel through the forest, climbing over the fallen branches, following a muddy little stream until there’s no sign of human intervention, not even the inevitable litter or soda bottle. I sit down on a decaying log to enjoy the dense forest and the rolling hilltops. The scene is painted with the sweet vitality of spring. This untouched stand of nature – not tamed nor disinfected – might be quite common in Lewisboro, perhaps considered to many to be merely a default state before private realtors and developers can begin their work, but to my mom’s students, this land is nothing short of breathtaking.
My friend Conor McCarthy and myself intend to hike through the town of Lewisboro, with tent and sleeping bag in pack, starting from the depths of Vista, crossing through South Salem and ending in the woodlands of Golden’s Bridge, to discover for ourselves this town’s natural beauty.1
In many ways, Lewisboro is a lone battalion on the front lines of a waging environmental war. The players are not unfamiliar. As technology extends the grasp of human interconnectedness, urban developers sprawl from the once-compact cities out into the neighboring towns. The resulting suburbs, with manicured lawns and homogenous developments, are nothing like the original forestlands. The “megalopolis” has marched its urban and suburban armies from Washington D.C to Boston. Few towns can be traversed by two High School students hiking only through woodlands, but – as we intend discover – Lewisboro is a last stand.
However, this environmental battalion is not impervious. Lewisboro must remain strong and unrelenting in its protection of the environment. Recognition and appreciation of natural beauty is intimately connected with the preservation of it. Thus, by documenting the beauty of this town, we hope to play a small role in inspiring our governing bodies and electoral forces to take up arms, to be proud of our progressive environmental policies and to be willing to push them even farther.
There’s much debate about the economic pros and cons of suburban sprawl (tax bases and property values etcetera); however, our conquering impulses over this town and this area should not just be tempered by economic imperatives to tread lightly over nature, but also by aesthetic and ethical considerations. Thoreau said, “He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair." Nature is important because it is beautiful; it is important because there’s an aesthetic richness to a diverse and untrammeled patch of forest that adds to the richness of the fabric of our own lives.
This is the natural richness that Conor McCarthy and I intend to seek out. We believe Lewisboro should continue its support for the environment, continue nurturing economic channels that allow preservation efforts such as the Leon Levy Preserve, and begin to serve as a model for other town and other communities to beat back the invading armies of megalopolis suburbanization. To tear apart the beauty of this town or this area or this state or anywhere else for the short-term benefits of a few is undemocratic and unsustainable and unethical. Our hike intends to discover this anew.
1. Here is a rough outline of the trail. Click for a larger picture. ↑
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