in my backyard

 When I was growing up, I wasn't aware that there was an abandoned village in my backyard. It was the village of Northwest. At one point in history, it was a thriving port of fisherman and those engaged in shipping items by water. My own grandparents lived in that village, but I never heard them speak of it. Northwest was a patch of woods with a few homes scattered about. As a kid exploring those woods, I knew of a few old barns. I played in those barns that held little in them beside a few old bicycles and a lot of dust and dirt. There were stalls of some type in them for what I figured were small animals as the sides of the stalls weren't very high. I knew of a few tombstones in the undergrowth. Years later I learned the little pond I skated on was a buffalo wallow. At one time a man was attempting to breed buffalo with cattle. Today that has been accomplished and we call them Beefalo's. I also didn't know that the very first cattle ranch in America was only twenty miles from where I lived. We weren't taught that in school, or I don't remember being taught that. 

 By the time I was a teenager Northwest was beginning to get populated by folks looking for a vacation home. The wealthy people from the city or just "upisland" as we used to say, buying up the land and building modern houses. Some of those people were famous and some just had money. I never paid much attention to any of them. Folks with more money than common sense in my opinion. I wasn't aware of who owned that property. In my day you could wander through those woods without anyone questioning anything. There weren't no trespassing signs anywhere that I knew of. The distance between homes was considerable in most cases. Directly behind my house was a dirt lane running through the woods. I was told it was there as a fire lane. There was another dirt lane that branched off that leading to northwest. We drove our cars down that road, cars that weren't licensed for the road nor where we. It also made a great path for sledding when the conditions were right. 

 It was years later when I discovered the village of northwest. I had read a small passage about it in a book written by the editor of the local newspaper. That book was published the year I was born. It also contains the genealogy of many local families. My mother had purchased that book when it was released because her family is in there. I have that copy today with my mother's written corrections in the margins. Over the years I have read bits and pieces of that history whenever it turns up. Having moved away from Northwest woods over fifty years ago I don't hear much. But Northwest was a forgotten place by the time I was born, a place the old timers mentioned to other old timers. I remember hearing stories being told that contained the phrase, down to northwest. As in, that happened down to northwest. 

Today I often wonder what history was lost because no one ever asked. My great grandfather certainly knew all about northwest, of that I'm certain. Grandmother Bennett lived down to northwest in the early part of the twentieth century. She married Grandfather Horace in 1909 and that is where their home was. But Northwest was a dying village by then. Deep water is what killed that village. Just across the bay on the opposite shore is the town of Sag Harbor and Sag Harbor has a harbor with deep waters. The water is deep enough for the whaling ships to moor, and that port became the center of that activity. Northwest slowly died as the ships and shipping went to Sag Harbor. 

 It's true that we sometimes don't know what is in our own backyard. We tend to travel to see the new sites, the historical ones, and miss what is right down the road. There has been an increased awareness of local history in recent decades. This is mostly due to tourism and the attracting of those tourist dollars. I suppose that has always been true on some level. Museums have always been popular. I think it started with recollections. Recollections are collections of things remembered. It's what we call nostalgia today. In some ways it is like having secret knowledge. Everyone likes to have secret knowledge. It is that knowledge of something that you can relate to another when they cannot dispute that. They may express doubts, not believe you, or question your statement, but they cannot disprove it. It's secret knowledge that only you possess. That's a memory. That's a recollection! Sometimes though it is what we don't remember that bothers us the most. I sure wish I had known more back then, enough to ask anyway. I wandered through those woods but never really saw. They were just there, in my backyard.