There is a section of Northampton, Massachusestts called the Meadows.  It is a vast tract of land close to the city’s downtown, bordered to the east and south by the Connecticut River.  While the land within it is mostly used for agriculture, there is also a series of dirt roads, a small airport, a marina, and a fairground within its boundaries, and well as a number of homes.

I spent ten years walking my dog Milo in the Meadows every day. The views from and within the Meadows change with the seasons.  In mid-summer the corn is so high that it is not easy to see much else when you walk along the dirt roads bordering the fields.  At other times, a mist is suspended over the river that clouds the view of the small mountains to the south.

It is from atop one of these peaks that Thomas Cole saw and painted his famous work “The Oxbow” in 1836.  Cole’s painting is widely interpreted as a portrayal of the struggle between wilderness and civilization.  Today The Meadows cannot accurately be described as wilderness, but it is still the broadest expanse of undeveloped land in Northampton.  The contemporary struggle is, perhaps, the city’s attempt to preserve and balance the mixture of uses of the land in a way that benefits of all who live, work, or play there.  While much of what goes on in the Meadows is peaceful, it is also, for some, a place for illegal dumping, vandalism, joyriding, or drinking,

I have been drawn to the magic of particular moments in the Meadows.  It is, ultimately, a landscape whose rhythms, textures, uses, and appeal are both unique and yet also typical of New England.