Out of the human hive and into the Wilderness

Last Sunday, I embarked upon a journey away from the human hive that is NYC to the outer peripherals of the state. I have been planning to purchase a piece of undeveloped land for well over a year now, and the time is ripe to set the plan into motion. With rising gas prices and a collapsing housing market, having a fully owned forest or agricultural parcel could have profoundly beneficial effects for one's health and future. So off I went to look at a few properties in upstate New York. At 6am in the morning, I moved myself out of bed, went through the regular motions, and headed out of my apartment. The city scape was largely deserted at this hour. A fine morning fog shrouded the distant skyscrapers, dimming and softening the edges of the horizon spanning mega-city. The metropolis appeared largely deserted, almost ancient in a sense that I found very hard to grasp. The scene from the nearby subway terminal was one of uncommon stillness. For some odd reason, NYC( the economic heart of human civilization) felt a bit like the abandoned Anasazi ruins that I visited 4 months ago. Shaking off such absurd thoughts, I walked down the subway entrance wondering how NYC would look like if 99% of it's population simply vanished.

With great alacrity, I made my way to the Port Authority and onto a Greyhound bus, five hours of road time took me 300 miles west of the city into the small, peripheral center of Utica. From there, I met up with the real estate agent and went to see several properties. Most of these land parcels were heavily wooded with entry points on seasonally maintained roads of dubious quality. I needed an area with some basic qualities: reliable ground water, ample and mature hardwoods, agriculturally productive soil, and (if the gods are kind) surrounding wildlife and fishing resources. Most of the properties seen came far short of what I required.

Finally though, we came upon a very interesting place. The land at first glance appeared to be heavily forested. As I made my way through the forest, I noticed long stretches of low stone walls along the lengths of the forest. I made my way through several hundred feet of heavy woods, the foliage screen suddenly lifted. Before me stood this high, circular, and oddly regular-shaped hill. The hill top was flattened into a plateau of scrub and tall grasses. Making my way to the hill top, I was astounded by the panoramic vista before my eyes. The hill overlooked miles of the surrounding countryside and valley.

I could see the extent of the forests that I had just walked through, the farm next to it, and even the farms and forests far from the main road that led up to this land area. Less than a mile away, there stood this huge derelict-looking radar dish on yet another oddly regular hilltop. The structures upon this land felt subtly strange and even a bit alien to me. It felt as if it was touched by the passing of generations, as if the land itself was shaped by countless hands whose owners I would never meet. Yet at the same time, I felt as if I remember this place somehow, but the memories were jumbled beyond recognition. As we walked back to the car, the real estate agent casually mentioned that the radar dish was built by the military in the 1960s and that it has long since been deactivated. The man then went on a rant about how this wouldn't affect the real estate's future value and such. And all of a sudden, EVERYTHING fell into place.

There was the forest at first. Then men came, with stone hatchets the forest was turned into farmland divided between incessantly warring tribes and confederations. The land that I stood on was part of the vast the Oneida confederation, a polity that spanned a third of this state. To the East they faced the Mohican tribes, to the West there was an alliance of Huron chiefdoms. The mound that I stood on was an old Oneida military hill fortress. For centuries they fought their savage wars, and then a great sickness spread across the land, cutting down the populace like weeds. For a century afterwards, the few people that remained lived by hunting, gathering, and limited gardening. The forest swallowed this land. And then other men came, waves of Anglo Saxons, followed by Germans and European lowlanders. After many bloody wars with the first settlers, the Germanic peoples were victorious. The forest appeared virgin to them, and they proceeded to clear the trees with steel and grit and put the country to farmland once more. Using muscle power alone, these Germanic peoples built the old stone walls which marked the boundaries of their farms. Generations passed, and change swept the land yet again. The industrial revolution was upon the land. The descendents of these farmers could not keep their ancestors' small farms. They were thus pushed into the teeming cities. Generations passed and the forest once more swallowed the achievements of man's labor. And then once more people came, this time the world was divided between two great nations. Proud and hostile, they tried to gain dominance over one another through the possessions of nuclear tipped missiles. The Americans rebuilt a paved road into this forest, they saw the hold Oneida fort hill, and placed a radar installation on top of it's summit. This radar, along with many other, created a vast sensory network. The Soviet ICBMs could thus be monitored coming over the Northern polar cap and a prompt retaliatory strike launched in time. The war never came and the radar along with the land fell into disuse. The forest came once more and cleansed all.

So trapped was I in the depth of my own ruminations that I stumbled upon stick bushes filled with raspberries and blueberries. Between the berry patches were trees growing hundreds of green crab apples. I picked pounds of the delectable berries and apples and took them all home with me. It was a good day!