Cooperstown Observed by Sam Goodyear

Our Towering Steadfast Friends

This is the time of year, when it gets dark before five and when people retreat into their homes before nightfall and when there are many parking spaces on Main Street and when the flow of visitors to Cooperstown has shrunk to a trickle—this is the time that people will say that Cooperstown is dead. And they would be dead wrong.

What about all the trees that line the streets and avenues and lanes and the one boulevard in town? They are most definitely not dead. They live and breathe in their own way and stand guard and never sleep. They withstand the rigors of winter, the cold and wind and ice and snow, and watch over us.

How easy it is to take things for granted. And if we are not careful, we will deprive ourselves of the riches trees bring us. And during the hot summer day, walking along the street, the shade provided by a generous tree brings relief and renewed energy to continue. We have just experienced the annual symphonic splendor of autumn. The summer brought us a million shades of green and the benefits of chlorophyll and fragrance. The renewed hope that comes with spring awakens feelings of thankfulness. And winter? No craftsmen could create the infinite filigree of limbs and branches and twigs that surround us. There are 206 bones in the human body and inconceivably more such elements in a single tree.

Taking the time to pass days looking upward has its reward in appreciating the loftiness and sweep of every single tree in town.

In Cooper Grounds, aka Cooper Park, the trees to the right of James Fenimore Cooper stand arrayed like a corps de ballet keeping vigil in mid-pause.

If you have an appointment at the Bassett Clinic, and perhaps you are feeling poorly, viewing the host of trees across the river will surely make you feel that much better. And if you are already feeling fine, you feel finer still. Guaranteed.

You may occasionally encounter a tree where the bark has been ripped away, exposing a sad wound. Stroke the wound with your hand. The tree will be grateful. There is one such tree at the corner of Fair and Church streets.

Every tree is perfect. Some are more perfect than others. One specimen of supreme perfection stands at the corner of Atwell Road and Fair Street. Check it out. It will lift your spirit in every season.
The closing couplet of Joyce Kilmer’s poem, “Trees,” reads” “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” God was certainly generous to Cooperstown, wouldn’t you agree?

Sam Goodyear was born in Cooperstown and, because of his father’s profession in the Foreign Service, grew up all over the world and continued that pattern throughout his adult life until two years ago, when he returned to where he was born. It took him only 80 years to do so.