Bethlehem, New York | October 22, 2026
I took a walk down Waldenmaier Road this evening and brought my camera along. Autumn is putting on quite a show here in Bethlehem, New York.
Here are a few things that caught my eye along the way.
Sometimes it’s nice to just take a walk, look around, and enjoy what nature has to offer.
Notice. Ponder. Share.
— Ron Dodson
Yesterday afternoon I took a walk along the Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail, starting in Delmar, New York, and heading toward Albany before turning around and walking back. It was a gray, overcast October afternoon, but the changing colors of the leaves added a welcome splash of color to the landscape.
As I walked, I couldn’t help thinking about the old Delaware and Hudson Railroad line that once occupied this same corridor. For many years, trains traveled this route carrying people and goods, connecting communities and contributing to the region’s economy. What is now a peaceful place to walk, jog, and ride bicycles was once part of a bustling transportation system.
Times change, and so do our needs.
The railroad eventually disappeared from this landscape, but the corridor it created remained. Rather than allowing it to become an abandoned strip of land, people found a new use for it. Today, the trail provides opportunities for recreation, exercise, enjoying nature, and connecting communities in a different way.
I find that interesting. The landscape still serves people, just not in the same way it once did.
Nothing ever really stays the same, nor should it, I suppose. Communities change, economies change, technology changes, and the ways we use land change along with them.
But change doesn’t automatically mean improvement. That depends, at least in part, on the decisions we make along the way.
To me, that’s an important part of stewardship. Recognizing that the things we create and the landscapes we alter today will become part of what future generations inherit.
As I walked beneath the colorful October leaves, I found myself pondering a simple question: Are we managing change in ways that will serve the needs of both present and future generations?
Something worth thinking about on an afternoon walk.
I spent much of September exploring southern Indiana during our annual trip back to the region where Theresa and I were born and raised. Theresa was born in Evansville, and I was born in Washington.
One of my lifelong hobbies has been researching family history. Over the decades, I’ve built a sizable family tree, with plenty of names, dates, and places.
But something has changed.
Over the past several years, I’ve become less interested in simply adding more names to my family tree and more interested in discovering the stories behind those names.
Who were these people? How did they live? Why did they leave one place and settle in another? What routes did they travel? What opportunities, hardships, and circumstances influenced the decisions they made?
In other words, I’m becoming more interested in their lives than in their names.
One of those names is Elias Arvin, my third great-grandfather on my dad’s side of the family.
Elias is buried in Old Union Cemetery near Alfordsville, Indiana. I discovered that he was born in Maryland and served as a soldier during the War of 1812. His older brother, Henry Arvin, also served during that war.
Following the war, both brothers and their families left Maryland and moved to Kentucky, where they lived for several years before eventually receiving land grants in southern Indiana.
And that got me wondering.
How did they get from Kentucky to Indiana?
Today, we simply get into our cars, enter a destination into our GPS, and follow the directions. But in the early 1800s, getting from one place to another was a very different undertaking.
What roads existed? Were they really roads, or simply trails through the wilderness? How did families transport their belongings? Where did they cross the rivers? And why did they choose to settle where they did?
Those questions led me to begin researching the early roads, trails, and river crossings of southern Indiana.
And that led me to a fascinating place called Hindostan, an early settlement along the East Fork of the White River.
Hindostan has a history of its own, involving early settlement, transportation, commerce, disease, and eventually the disappearance of a once-promising community.
But what especially caught my attention was the landscape itself.
The river, the exposed bedrock, the surrounding hills, and the natural features that influenced where people traveled and settled.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just researching my ancestors. I was exploring the relationships between people and the natural world they inhabited.
And I began to realize that the same questions I was asking about my ancestors could be asked about almost any community, landscape, or place we encounter today.
Why is it here? How did it get this way? What natural and human-created systems influenced its development? And what can we learn by paying attention?
What began as a search for a name on a family tree has become an exploration of history, geography, nature, and the decisions people made more than 200 years ago.
It’s both an old story and a new adventure for me.
And I’ve discovered something else along the way.
The more I discover, the more I discover there is to discover.
I suppose that’s what happens when you start paying attention, asking questions, and following your curiosity wherever it takes you.
And, in my case, it sometimes takes me right back to where I started.
Only now, I see the place a little differently.
During my recent stay in southern Indiana, I spent an afternoon walking up and down Main Street in Washington.
I was pleased by what I saw.
A number of years ago, some of the empty storefronts had been nicely decorated to make them look as though businesses were operating inside. It was certainly better than staring through dusty windows into empty buildings, but they were still empty buildings.
This time, many of those storefronts were actually occupied.
There were new businesses offering a variety of products and services. We were there after hours, so most of them were closed and downtown wasn’t particularly busy. But it still made me happy.
When I was a kid, going downtown in Washington meant places like Ted’s Bakery, Donaldson’s Toggery, The Bell and the Spudnut Shop. Those places are long gone.
But downtown isn’t.
And a couple of businesses I remember from those days are still chugging along. The Indiana Theater is still there. So is the White Steamer, still selling hamburgers beneath that wonderful old Coca-Cola sign.
I think a thriving downtown is—or at least should be—the heart of a community.
Not a mall. Not a Walmart Supercenter.
An actual downtown.
But there was another Washington business I wanted to visit while I was back. It isn’t downtown, but it has an even more personal connection for me.
Mason’s Root Beer.
Mason’s opened in 1951. Their sign this year proudly announces their 75th season.
I spent two great summers working there when I was young, cooking food and washing root beer mugs.
And yes, they were actual mugs.
So, naturally, I had to go back.
I ordered one of Mason’s foot-long coneys.
It was still great.
There is something comforting about returning to a place you knew more than half a century ago and discovering that you can still walk up to the window and order something you remember eating when you were young.
I don’t expect everything from my childhood to still be there. Most of it isn’t. Nor should everything remain exactly as it was. Communities change. Businesses come and go. People come and go.
That’s life.
But places like Mason’s become something more than businesses. They become part of the collective memory of a community—and part of the individual memories of people like me.
Now I hear Mason’s is for sale.
I hope someone buys it.
Not because Washington should somehow be frozen in the 1960s. The new businesses I saw downtown demonstrate exactly the opposite. A healthy community needs new people, new ideas and new ventures.
But it also needs people willing to carry some good things forward.
Seventy-five seasons is a pretty good run.
I’d like there to be a 76th.
And whoever buys the place can change whatever they think needs changing.
Just don’t mess with the coneys.
I took a walk yesterday down Rarick Road, through Hollyhock Hollow and alongside the Onesquathaw Creek.
Fall is certainly in the air.
The trees haven’t completely made up their minds yet. There is still plenty of green, but yellow and gold are beginning to work their way through the woods. Leaves are collecting along the edge of the road, and the Onesquathaw is running low enough that rocks normally surrounded by moving water are now part of the landscape.
It was surprisingly quiet.
The only bird making much of an effort to announce itself was a Blue Jay. That seems appropriate somehow. When most of the woods are growing quieter, you can usually count on a Blue Jay to have something to say.
I also noticed several interesting yellow mushrooms growing in a grassy area beside the road. I don’t know what they were, and perhaps that doesn’t matter. I noticed them. I stopped. I looked. I took a picture.
That’s enough sometimes.
I enjoy fall, although perhaps enjoy isn’t quite the right word.
There is something melancholy about it.
Spring feels like anticipation. Everything is about to happen.
Summer feels like abundance. Everything is happening.
Fall is different.
Fall reminds you that everything has a season.
The creek gets lower. The birds become quieter. Leaves change color and eventually let go. The woods begin opening themselves back up, revealing things that have been hidden behind green leaves all summer.
Maybe that’s why I like walking here this time of year.
Nothing along Rarick Road was particularly spectacular today. No bear to wrestle. No rare bird. No great discovery.
Just a quiet road, a low creek, a noisy Blue Jay, some yellow mushrooms, and an old guy paying attention.
Not a bad way to spend part of an October afternoon.
—Ron
While taking my daily virtual field trip through the news, I noticed an article about a couple in Highland Park, Illinois, who gradually transformed much of their conventional lawn into a landscape filled with native plants.
What had once been primarily grass now attracts birds, butterflies, bees and other wildlife.
At first, I noticed the article because of the nature connection. I have spent much of my life thinking about landscapes, wildlife habitat and conservation. But as I continued reading, I began thinking about something broader.
What is a yard actually for?
That sounds like a ridiculously simple question. But how often do we actually ask it?
Many of us acquire a house with a lawn because that is what came with the house. We mow it. Maybe we fertilize it. We control weeds. Some people water it. We buy equipment to maintain it or pay someone else to do the work.
And year after year, we keep doing it.
But why?
There are plenty of good answers. A lawn can be a wonderful place for children to play, for a dog to run, for friends to gather or simply for someone who enjoys the appearance of an open green space.
But what about the portions of our yards that we maintain primarily because that’s what we’ve always done?
That is what this article made me ponder.
A yard is an asset. And like any asset, perhaps it is worth occasionally asking what we want it to do for us.
Could part of it grow food?
Could part provide habitat for birds and pollinators?
Could a tree provide shade that makes sitting outside more enjoyable?
Could a small garden give us flowers to photograph, butterflies to watch or simply a reason to walk outside every morning and see what changed overnight?
Could changing part of a lawn actually reduce some maintenance while increasing enjoyment?
And there is no single correct answer.
The point isn’t that everyone should replace their lawn with native plants.
The point is to notice the lawn in the first place.
Instead of seeing it simply as something that needs to be mowed again, perhaps we could occasionally stop and ask:
What is this little piece of land for—and what would I like it to provide?
Maybe the answer is grass.
Maybe it’s tomatoes.
Maybe it’s a pollinator garden.
Maybe it’s a shade tree and a comfortable chair.
Maybe it’s a place for the grandchildren to play.
Maybe it’s some of each.
That seems to me like a small example of The Stewardship Way.
Notice something we already have.
Become curious about it.
Ask whether we’re managing it intentionally or simply continuing what we’ve always done.
And then decide whether anything needs to change.
Sometimes the answer may be nothing at all.
But we wouldn’t know that until we stopped long enough to notice.
The article that started me pondering this was “How one American couple ditched their lawn and created a wildlife haven.” It tells the story of an Illinois couple who gradually changed their conventional yard and what happened as wildlife began returning.
Read the article in The Guardian
A Question to Ponder:
If your yard is an asset, what return would you like it to provide—not simply in dollars, but in time, enjoyment, food, beauty, wildlife, purpose or memories?
A few days ago, I took another short walk down Waldenmaier Road and noticed another small patch of bright orange Jack-o’-lantern mushrooms growing at the base of a decaying tree.
Did you know?
Jack-o’-lantern mushrooms are bioluminescent. Their gills can produce a faint greenish glow in the dark through a chemical reaction similar to the one that allows fireflies to glow.
But there is more going on here than an interesting mushroom.
Fungi are among nature’s great recyclers. They help break down dead wood and other organic material, returning nutrients to the soil where they can become part of another generation of life.
The orange mushrooms are simply the part we happen to notice.
Much of the real work is taking place out of sight.
Sometimes stewardship begins by noticing what nature is already doing.
During my daily virtual field trip through the news, I noticed an article on a website about San José, California, and the city’s effort to make it easier to build small multifamily housing in existing residential neighborhoods.
There are plenty of stories these days about communities trying to increase housing supply, so that alone probably would not have caused me to stop.
What caught my attention were the exceptions.
San José is considering a process that would make some small multifamily housing projects easier and faster to approve. But the city is not proposing to treat every residential parcel exactly the same.
Properties in certain flood-prone areas, along riparian corridors, in environmentally sensitive locations, or containing significant historic resources would continue to receive additional review.
That made me stop.
San José has more than 30 streams and roughly 136 miles of riparian corridors. Those narrow pieces of land beside streams may perform several functions at the same time. They can carry and temporarily store water, provide wildlife habitat, support vegetation, influence water quality, offer recreational opportunities, and affect what happens upstream and downstream during heavy rainfall.
Yet on a zoning map, the same piece of land may simply look like a parcel where someone could build another home.
That made me wonder whether one of the problems we sometimes create for ourselves begins with how narrowly we define an asset.
If we look at a piece of property only as a potential building site, then the obvious question becomes:
How much can we build there?
But what if the same land is already doing several other things?
What if it helps carry stormwater?
What if it provides room for a stream to move?
What if trees growing there help cool a neighborhood?
What if it provides wildlife habitat?
What if it contains something historically significant?
Suddenly the question becomes more complicated.
Maybe the first question should not be:
What could we put here?
Maybe it should be:
What is this place already doing?
This does not mean that San José should not build more housing. Housing is also an asset, and communities have legitimate reasons to consider how existing neighborhoods can accommodate more people.
But perhaps good stewardship begins with a more complete inventory.
Before changing an asset, do we understand all of the functions it currently performs?
Who benefits from those functions?
What would be lost if they disappeared?
Could some of those functions be replaced somewhere else?
What would replacement cost?
And are there things that cannot easily be recreated once they are gone?
The same questions could be asked about a wetland, an old building, a golf course, a farm, a vacant lot, a neighborhood park, or even an apparently unused piece of land.
There may also be another important question:
Are we solving today’s problem in a way that unnecessarily limits the choices available to people tomorrow?
That does not mean preserving everything exactly as it is.
It means noticing what is already there before deciding what it should become.
San José may be hundreds or thousands of miles from where most of us live, but the stewardship question is not really about California.
It could apply in Anyplace, USA.
A town wants more housing.
A developer wants to build on a wet field.
A community wants to widen a road.
A school district owns unused land.
A golf course closes.
An old factory becomes vacant.
A stream runs through property someone wants to develop.
A wooded parcel looks like an obvious place for another subdivision.
Before deciding what comes next, perhaps we should stop long enough to notice what is already there.
Not simply what we call it.
Not merely what the tax map says it is worth.
But what functions it performs, what history it contains, who depends upon it, and what choices changing it may eliminate.
That seems like a pretty good place for stewardship to begin.
Question to Ponder:
Before we decide what a place should become, have we taken the time to notice everything it already is?
This Field Note began with something I noticed while reading about San José’s proposed changes to its housing and land-use policies.
Don’t just take my word for it. Read the source material yourself. You may notice something I didn’t, wonder about something different, or come away with an entirely different perspective.
Click Here to read the plan.
Then ask yourself:
What did you notice? What did it make you wonder about?
Come wander and wonder with me.
Each day I take both real and virtual field trips looking for Notice Moments—things that cause me to stop, become curious and ask questions. Sometimes I find them along a trail or roadside. Sometimes I find them while reading the news. I don’t share them because I already know the answer. I share them because they seem worth noticing—and because you may notice something I missed.
While walking at Hollyhock Hollow a few days ago, I noticed this unusual creature slowly making its way across the gravel road. It is a hellgrammite, the aquatic larval stage of the dobsonfly.
For most of its life, it lived hidden beneath rocks in a clean, well-oxygenated stream, where it was an active predator. But when the time comes, it leaves the water and crawls onto land to complete one of the most remarkable transformations in the insect world.
To me, it was simply crossing a road.
To the hellgrammite, it was the final leg of a journey that had taken years.
It made me wonder how many extraordinary stories are unfolding beneath our feet every day—stories we never see because we never stop to notice.
Stewardship begins with noticing.
— Ron Dodson
I also can’t help but smile at the mystery behind the adult’s name. No one seems to know for certain why it’s called a dobsonfly. Perhaps somewhere in history there really was a Mr. or Ms. Dobson who admired them… or maybe even a distant relative. 😉
When a community already knows where flooding is likely to occur, at what point does repeated disaster stop being only a weather story and become a stewardship story?
West Virginia prepared a statewide flood-protection plan in 2004. After devastating flooding in 2016, it created a resiliency office partly responsible for keeping that plan current. Yet major recommendations, dependable funding, and implementation mechanisms remained incomplete as damaging floods continued.
What is the practical difference between having a plan and stewarding a place according to one? Who was supposed to act, what prevented action, what costs were deferred, and what evidence should the public expect to see before the next storm?
To read the article in Mountain State Spotlight’s July 29 investigation, click: “Deadly flooding in West Virginia finds prevention plans unaddressed.”
Stewardship Way Virtual Field Trip
Every day I take a virtual field trip through the news searching for stories that help us better understand the stewardship of places. Most simply go into my Notice Moment Reserve. Occasionally one makes me stop, notice, and ponder. This is one of those stories.
I don’t share these to tell you what to think. I share them because they raise questions worth asking. I invite you to read the original article and come wander and wonder with me.
“I don’t share these to tell you what to think. I share them because they raise questions worth asking.”