I often go to the western-part of Partridge Run Wildlife Management Area to explore and experience nature. Several times in the past I have walked through the Bradt Hill Road Cemetery, and looked at some of the stones in amazement. This cemetery captures my imagination based partly on the time of the stones and where they are located. The cemetery is almost 40 miles away from the city, and most of the stones date from 1825-1875.

These people who once lived here must have lived much different life then the lives of other people and myself in the Berne community. This distance by horse and buggy was a long way from the city, and resources from the city where rare and expensive. Steel and other urban products likely made it out here, but they where rare and rugged individualism was the norm. There was no hopping into their Ford Ranger 4x4 Pickup Truck and driving to the city. Probably few of these people regularly went to Albany, much less doing it in an hour.

This area inevitably was effected by the anti-rent wars and the tyrannical actions of the Van Renselears. Yet, most of the time there was no city man out here enforcing the law, much less patrolling the highways. There was a deeper freedom and a realization of life and death. Inevitably, there where bandits and other evil people out here, but it was far different when it wasn't in the grasp and direct control of urban downtown Albany.

I sometimes wonder what people did around here. None of the stones gave much of a clue, but I am guessing that it was largely employed people in agriculture and the exploitation of other natural products. Much of it would have been subsidence farming, but also cheese making and timber products made it to the growing city of Albany. I am sure that if I where to talk to the locals who lived this life in our contemporary society, I would understand more what this free life was about.

The more I think about this cemetery, I start to see it as a celebration of life and the great freedom of these people that once lived here. It is amazing that somebody still cares for the many small rural cemeteries up at Partridge Run, and that they are not totally drowned out and forgotten over the roar of the many ATVs, snowmobiles, and pickup trucks that go by everyday.

The forces that try to make us forget this free life are not only mechanical or technical. Nature tends to push down stones by growing up tree routes under them, brush around them, and the shifting ground. Kids come up here and get drunk, and with contempt to the past, try to destroy these stones. Ironically, they are destroying the same freedom that the so enjoy.

I wish I could go back to this time and live some of the life of these people. It would have been full of hardships and difficulties, but such hardship would largely be created through the land and the life, and not abstract relations that bare nothing to nature. This is not the only cemetery that I've walked around recently, but it's location and the people it represents fascinates me as an individual.