My Backyard
by Carol Lee

To many of us, the backyard defines our own little realms in this wonderland called the Hudson Valley. Sometimes, it encompasses the grass from the back of the house to the neighbor's fence or bushes. Maybe it stretches vigorously over a little stream, past a slate path, a panoply of flower beds. Perhaps there's a pup tent for the kids, or a hammock slung between two trees laden heavy with leaves that sound like distant chimes . . . a quiet retreat, safe within its own boundaries.

Maybe you have a hundred acres, and your view doesn't stop at the neighbor's back door, but rambles instead over fruit orchards, or vast hillsides of sunflowers, or meadows with horses roaming within neat fences. Here, a red barn in need of repainting, over there, the old farmhouse where the caretaker now lives, and beyond, not visible from the road, the new manse you built for yourself.

A neighbor built a French country farmhouse on a five-acre field. Her vista stretches across a county road, a thousand feet in the distance, then beyond more fields, all the way to the Catskill Mountains. She claims she "borrows" all this land, because she sees it as part of her five-acre parcel.

My view is a patchwork of rolling hills, in all shades of green and thatch, depending on the weather, alternating with lush forest, always picturesque, but incomparable in autumn. The hills themselves are crowned with a mantle of woods, like the cropped mane of a racing horse. Occasionally, a yellow or red tractor is parked on a hillside . . . and bales of hay await removal. Beyond these hills are the Catskill Mountains, and the magnificent sunsets with sky paintings you can set a clock by, every day (even those days the sun doesn't shine it will peek out between the clouds at day's end as if to tip its hat before setting: "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.") At night, the lights of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge punctuate the black velvet sky like an iridescent constellation that, if it existed, might be called String of Pearls. I call this My Backyard. It's everything I can see from the back of my house. It's all mine.

The first morning I awoke in the house, I stood at the kitchen window, my breath stalled in my heart. "Is that the Hudson River?" I asked my husband. No, it was just a cloud, flat as a lake, that had descended over a distant valley, looking every bit like a river. No matter. The view from my back yard is breathtaking. And always different.

Each day as we admired that view—all 35 miles and 180 degrees of it—we would muse about how those hillsides would someday—soon, we even ventured—be covered with houses. One day, while my brother was visiting, I handed him a pair of binoculars so that he could enjoy some intimacy with the many dimensions of the view. "What's that orange stuff over there?" he asked, pointing with one hand and passing the binoculars with the other. "Oh, my God!" I cried, after identifying the plastic orange fencing draped around wooden posts clearly defining a new building lot, about a mile away. A backhoe was already in place. "That's my view! What are they doing there?" It's a travesty! A trespass! Yet it's what we always knew would happen.

In 1997, we moved to Milan from Westchester, just north of Croton-on-Hudson, south of Peekskill, from a place now called Cortlandt Manor. When we moved to Cortland Manor in 1986, it didn't even exist on the map. By the time we left, driving a mere five miles to shop involved waiting interminably on long lines at traffic lights—lights which when first installed had been nothing but warning blinkers. The humble shopping centers comprised of little stores owned by small businessmen and women were being supplanted by huge malls with high-end purveyors of all the niceties and necessities for new homes and upscale living. The Croton-Harmon station no longer met the area's needs, and a second Metro North station, with acres of parking, was added . . . putting Cortlandt Manor on the map! The quiet little community was booming, and we couldn't wait to leave.

So we began looking for buildable land further up the Hudson Valley. We found Cold Spring and Garrison too expensive. Fishkill was too crowded. Rhinebeck seemed too crowded on weekends; we couldn't handle the traffic.

We wanted to be up high, to see the sunset and distant views. My husband found our property by reading topographic maps. He'd discern the highest ridges on these maps and call brokers to ask if there was property available there. Most didn't even know the street names he mentioned. But Shirley Burroughs, a Rhinebeck realtor with Coldwell Banker, knew of property on the ridge my husband had pinpointed. We saw the land and, just as quickly, bought it.

An architect friend from New York City asked incredulously, after we purchased the property, "Who lives up there?" "Witness Protection Program people," I mused, and my husband added, "Axe murderers." In fact, it was pretty desolate. The road up our way was empty, the remains of fallen-down farms and a few inhabited houses dotted the road. Scraggly dogs roamed freely. The population in Milan was just under 2,000 in 1997, and it encompassed 23,398 acres, or 35 to 36 square miles. Locals kept correcting our pronunciation when we said Mi-LAN instead of MY-lan.

Market Street in Red Hook was homespun compared to Market Street in Rhinebeck, with its high-end boutiques and ample restaurants. Store fronts in Red Hook were often vacant, while rents kept increasing in Rhinebeck. You could get through the light at Red Hook's four corners without a hitch on the weekends and be backed up a quarter mile or more waiting for the light to change in Rhinebeck.

There have been a lot of changes in the area since then. The Red Hook storefronts are all rented. We now have a Hannaford, and I've learned alternate routes to avoid the traffic backed up at the light at the four corners in Red Hook. Bard College didn't figure much in our equation when we moved here, but now it provides a wealth of cultural activities and a society of new friends gleaned from the new Lifetime Learning Institute. We have new political leadership in Milan, on whom we depend to defend our little haven from industry and mindless development, and, thankfully, Milan still -doesn't have a town center. As it turns out, my neighbors are really wonderful and interesting people.

Driving home on Route 308 the other night, enjoying the verdant meadows flanking the road, I muttered something about how this would all be houses one day, much like what's happening on Route 199. Almost daily now, new homes are raised or trucked in and plunked down on erstwhile farms. One morning, a makeshift "For Sale" sign appeared on a five-acre property adjacent to ours. It would have no impact on the view, but owning it would guarantee our quiet and privacy. It cost us twice what it would have cost us three years ago when we first considered purchasing it and decided then that it would be "a waste of money . . .. Why buy it? Who would want it?"

Indeed, lots of people want what lured us originally to Milan and its environs. Today, it is still beautiful and life is more convenient and enriching. And the growth in population has netted me even more new friends.

But the rural landscape I cherish threatens to become a suburb. What will become of "my backyard"? My husband says everyone wants to be the last one to move into an area.

But when the hillsides are no longer mine, and there are more traffic lights on the roads for still more cars, will we consider, once again, looking somewhere else for a place with open landscapes and quiet? Is this going to continue happening everywhere? Will we have to leave our friends behind. Or are they thinking the same thing?