The view from Woodstock

I live in Woodstock, New York, which is one of the most beautiful places around. Poised between the heights of the Catskill Mountains and the depths of the Hudson River, it is a charming hamlet populated with characters of every stripe. There are scholars, like the Thurmans; and celebrities. There are famed writers and intellectual pioneers. There are musicians and village knitters. And there are meadows, springs, ferns, and ancient sacred sites. I'm pretty sure there are fairies.

What many don't realize is that Woodstock is not the site of the famed concert; it was only planned here. This is a place where artists, utopians, religious figures and healers have congregated for thousands of years. This is a place where people have mountain top experiences.

I value living in the place where so many people sounded the dawn of the Aquarian Age in a daring breakthrough of art, aspiration, and plain old Dyonisian wildness. Imagine, now, that tens of thousands of people found their way before the days of the internet, to an amazing, one of a kind "happening." I think we could use a few more of those. Not just the same thing, but something - collective.

It's been forty years since that great event, and the town of Woodstock looks like a strange anachronism: known for its burst of modernity, it seems comically frozen in a flower-power vignette, complete with tye-dye, windchimes, and cute candles. Many of the original ideals faded, replaced by corruption, or just exhaustion. The hippies, when they show up, do look a bit tired. The weirdest part to my eyes are the children, so avant garde before their time. And yet.

I live in a town where the two "supermarkets" are organic ones, and i have to leave town to find candybars or fast food. I live in a town that has two hardware stores and no department stores. I like that. I live in a town where people of all ages come together on Sunday afternoons and drum in the village square. There are extra instruments - rattles or shakers - for little tikes that may not have known the ritual. Everyone gets something.

At a time when corporate pillaging has peaked, perhaps a little village like this, with a bit of dusting, could regain its star status. Even mavericks have to make succession plans. I wonder, what will the younger generation do? What will we do with this legacy? Can iconoclasts have traditions? We'll see.