Knowing when it's enough

The Connecticut River, looking north from the French King Bridge at the Erving-Gill  (Mass.) town line.

The Oxbow of the Connecticut River in Northampton, Mass., circa 1910.

"A farmer … has an enormous innate need to simply hold still, to keep what he’s got, to limit greed to what he can keep….What’s the use of owning more than you can plough, or hay, or cut into sawlogs or pulp or firewood in the wintertime, or drive spikes into to bleed out maple sap in sugar time? No use, at all. In the Connecticut Valley, this trait has saved a lot of beauty.''

-- Evan Hill, in The Connecticut River (1972)