Still Here

It is late August, and in the evenings, I smile to hear the summer serenade of cicadas, crickets, and a lonely owl. In 2025, few are given the blessing of Nature’s nighttime songs; they have been beeped, revved, yelled, and motored into silence… but blessedly, not so in Easton. 

In the ‘70’s, a time of honor-the Earth and do-it-yourself living, author and artist Eric Sloane was already wistful about what had been lost, what he felt made America great. In I Remember America, Sloane reminisces about the back roads, barns, swamps, fields, and farms where he had worked and painted since the ‘20’s. He tells of a developer gesturing toward a stretch of asphalt parking lot and remarking with satisfaction, “To think that was once just a marsh!” Sloane well remembered the place, alive with birds, fish, and “the guttural guitar responses of green frogs.” When he said he liked it better the way it was, the developer scoffed, “You… are old-fashioned.” (pg. 31)

I am too. I love my 18^th century house with its lingering scent of wood smoke, wide plank floors, massive beams, and soot-blackened fireplaces. There is a cozy warmth to old wood touched by generations of hands and by the aura of the lives of those generations. Once, behind a wall taken down to do some repair work on our fireplace, we discovered the imprint of fabric in the horsehair plaster. I could imagine a weary worker taking a break and leaning back, leaving the mark of his shirt there for over two centuries.  

Sloane is particularly nostalgic about old barns and noted that many portrayed in his paintings had been, by 1971, demolished. He depicts the beauty of decay in missing panels, gaping windows, and iron hinges black against red barn doors now faded and scratched.

... Like the barn across from our house. Moss and lichens creep across the roof, and the shingles, exhausted after centuries of resisting rain and snow, are caving in. The planks of the doors are gap-toothed and rotted where they meet the ground, and no doubt many creatures seek shelter there at night.

In the morning, inspired by Sloane’s paintings, and the shadows, angles, and crevices that attracted him, I grab my phone and wander about the barn knowing the neighbors won’t mind. I am newly fascinated by the muscular roots that snake through the soil to the stonework of the attached garage. I love the shaft of sunlight on the dirt floor glimpsed through a crack where wood meets stone. I kneel on the earth to click a white aster blooming against the faded red stain of the barn door.  

And I am grateful that this barn still stands, as does our ancient house when so many like it have been torn down by those who value the new over the old. I am grateful for the swamp that abuts our property, where the frogs bellow in the spring, and the raccoons go hunting. And I am grateful that we live in Easton.

Eric Sloane was heartsick over the triumph of development, cars, and cash over landscapes he’d held dear. He mourned the passing of America’s agrarian past, the demolition of its remnants, and the destruction of natural ecosystems.   

Yet… we have them still in Easton. 

Thousands of acres of forest, swamps, meadows, and fields preserved. Historic homes. Farms and barns passed down through generations of Easton families.

For all of this, I thank our Commissions and Boards, Citizens for Easton, and the Aspetuck Land Trust for upholding our zoning and their vigilant stewardship. And many thanks to our farmers, for the work they do, the food and Christmas trees they provide, and the agricultural heritage they have upheld. 

Eric Sloane would be proud.  

 

 

Sloane, Eric, I Remember America, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975