Greene Woods
When I met Stephen and Dorothy Greene in the late 1960s, I quickly adopted them as the grandparents I never had (by the time I came along, only my paternal grandmother was alive, and she lived in Iowa). A diminutive, soft-spoken gentleman, Stephen was a WWI veteran, and often entertained me with tales of his adventures abroad, particularly those involving the railroads of France. "The locomotives had what we called 'peanut whistles'," he once said with a twinkle in his eye, as we sat on their front porch. Then, while Dorothy baked the most scrumptious fresh blueberry pies (the berries having been gathered from their back yard), Stephen would take me on hikes through his wondrous woodlands. I still miss them dearly; they helped shape—and even save—my life.
Yes, this is my foot, back when I was in my teens. The hillside of moss made a delightful carpet.
Stephen and Dorothy lived during the summer in an old barn converted into a home, just a few miles from Bearcamp Pond.
When Stephen died, his son inherited the property, and he promptly cut down all of the trees in order to start an organic vegetable farm. I was heartbroken. Worse, the farm quickly failed because the soil was not suitable, and the land lay in tatters thereafter. And so it should be no mystery why I chose to never return there.