Squabbling over little Estabrook Trail misses a larger point about land rights
Gallons of ink have been spilled and millions of Acton’s dollars spent on what is a tempest in a teapot.
“The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years before we were her people.”
— Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright”
“This land is your land; this land is my land.” — Woody Guthrie
I have read and sung those words for years.
But hold on! This land was made for you and me? I don’t think so. She was our land before we were her people? No, she wasn’t.
Only now have I considered the arrogance of appropriation that lies behind those words. And to be fair to Frost and Guthrie, I doubt that they had.
We have never owned the land. It was not made for you and me but was here long before we were and will remain after we have gone, if we don’t mess it up any more than we have already. Those that were here before the European invasion lived as partners with the land. The concept of ownership and its ugly offspring, trespass, never occurred to Indigenous communities.
For years this paper has followed a story that doesn’t appear to be ending soon — a story about a handful of homeowners who believe that the land abutting their house, a dirt path leading to Thoreau’s “wild tract,” is off-limits to some. Gallons of ink have been spilled and millions of Acton’s dollars spent on what is, very simply, a tempest in a teapot. For what? A small stretch opening to common ground.
I wonder about my fellow Acton citizens. Have they not reckoned with centuries of wisdom traditions that teach us to love our neighbor and welcome the stranger? Let’s remember that we are simply visitors here for a while, caring for the land which is, indeed, a gift outright.
Rev. Polly Jenkins Man
Acton Greene
