I wasn’t born here nor have I lived here long enough to qualify even as a pseudo-local. I was born and raised in Alaska. After a few years of college and working in Philadelphia I finally found the sense to ‘get outta Dodge’, get married and move to Shandaken three years ago. Over the years, however, I’ve managed to hang on to some of the better sensibilities my father passed on to me.

My father’s idea to give Alaska a try after the Second World War probably didn’t seem so bad to my mother. You see, they’d met at the Hanford plant and neither of them had a clue what they were working on until after the bomb was dropped. That must have pretty well clinched it for them – they moved to Alaska. Looking back now, I think their decision was a pretty good one. I grew up in the woods, surrounded by mountains and developed a pretty good idea of what’s important in life. My father passed on what he could of his Mohawk sensibility and pride to us kids and over the past eight years I’ve managed to recover the Mohawk traditions and language my grandfather hadn’t passed to his son. I’ve learned how important for all of us two-leggeds is the connection with the land of one’s birth – as well as the land one lives in.

While living down in Philly, I saw how lost people become when they are surrounded by brick boxes, concrete, steel and glass. For a while I was one of them. I credit these Catskill mountains with a good measure of my healing. Now, I find myself witnessing a local storm of disagreement and political angst that feels strangely familiar. It’s almost as if the ghost of Alaskan development politics finally sniffed me out in the Catskills and set up residence with a twisted sentiment of keeping me company. There’s a message for me in that somewhere……

I was at the American Cafe on election night. In the midst of being profoundly moved at the joy sweeping through so many of you, I could have sworn I saw the spirits of two old Mohawk clan mothers sitting in the corner with cautious looks on their faces. It troubled me this week. “Why do they have such sour faces?”, I thought. A few days later it finally sunk in: I was being encouraged to look beyond the obvious.

Everyone likes to be on the winning side of an issue. Those laboring for a change in this valley obviously had powerful feelings of victory and redemption after the election and having watched suburbia creep out and surround the woods of my Alaskan home as a young man, it’s not as if today I have any deep abiding affection for development. However, I wonder whether this community will now find the courage – and especially compassion – to put raw emotions in the past and focus on this comunity’s future. I’ve seen firsthand on my grandfather’s reservation how factionalism strangles and decimates a community – despite its leaders best efforts at compromise. I pray this community avoids such a legacy.

Some here say that Shandaken’s future lies in protecting the pristine mountains, streams and valleys. Still others say it lies in promoting the kind of growth that provides opportunities for future generations. Folks, I’ve been hearing this for forty years – and they both miss the mark. This community’s future lies in its people. Yeah, I know, those words probably sound trite to some of you (especially in the wake of an election), but in ’64 when my hometown was reeling from 250 deaths and a 9.2 Richter earthquake, those words gave us the courage to rebuild as we looked for potable water amidst the reek of sulphur, broken gas lines and collapsed septic tanks.

Memories of Shandaken’s flood in ’95 should be all this community needs to see how much you depend on each other. If not, perhaps you should reflect on the heightened security measures on the reservoir – they don’t have implications just for New York City’s residents. For myself, I reminisce about opinionated life-time Alaskans taking time out to help neighbors on the opposite political side – not out of preference – but out of necessity. A hard land will do that to political archrivals. Rural Alaskans seem to prefer ultra-opinionated neighbors over political apathy, urban creature comforts and social homogeneity because that same hard land provides something money, skyscrapers and concrete can’t provide: compassion.

When the temperature slips below -30 or a blizzard drops in, compassion is what ensures redneck John Birch Republican trappers check on Pinko-liberal tree-hugging hippies out of genuine concern – and vice versa. Compassion makes winter pipeline haul road truckers uniformly pull over to help despised out-of-state job-seekers change their tire. It’s not a big deal back home because eventually everyone learns: ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’. The jokes about ‘Tourist Season’ (it’s legal to shoot ’em now, right?) are the same in Alaska as they are here. However, if a blizzard whips up and scoots a developer’s Lexus or an attorney’s Jaguar into the ditch here in Shandaken, I’ll do the same thing I’d do back home. I get them into our house where it’s warm, lend them my phone while I head out with my snow shovel and start digging them out.

No, of course I don’t expect that they’d do the same for me. That’s not the point. Compassion is never about getting something in return, let alone ‘doing the right thing’. Compassion is action that comes from realizing the other fella has a right to be mistaken because that’s the first step to learning something better. I’ve been wrong before, and had folks say pretty nasty things to me because of it. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna make someone else suffer unnecessarily while learning they’re mistaken. So, sometimes compassion helps me find a kinder, more respectful way to speak with those mistaken about me. Yeah, some individuals don’t want to hear it. They seem determined to ‘hit the pothole’ because they’re convinced it doesn’t exist. Compassion doesn’t demand I let them run over me. I get out of the way. However, nothing gives me the right to make someone miserable just because they’re mistaken about something and I supposedly ‘know’ it.

And this is where those two old clan-mothers come in. They reminded me that, in the Mohawk longhouse, the traditional political way was to build consensus. Sure, it takes more time, but the advantage of consensus is it preserves the community. Too often, popularity is simply a hiding place for those lacking the courage to step across the line and privately meet with the opposite side of an issue. The result is a fractured constituency locked in pervasive mudslinging and leaders quarantined from meaningful dialogue with their opponents out of fear of alienating their constituencies. Sounds like my grandfather’s rez.

There’s a good saying my wife taught me: no one person has all the pieces of the picture. Certainly not any one of the numerous one-person PACs (political action committees) that sprouted so abundantly this fall. However, when silent fence-sitters AND mudslingers see two ardent opponents identify common ground, it encourages fence-sitters and mudslingers alike to find ways to build on it.

The political issues facing Shandaken are tough. There’s a clear mandate to protect the natural beauty and resources of this valley. However, the community also suffers from dependence on a fickle seasonal tourist income and lack of a nearby manufacturing or high-compensating service industry. Limited funds further hamper efforts at attracting such businesses here. Can this community identify development projects it enthusiastically supports? Without a doubt it can. Achieving this, however, will require more than novel ideas. It will require a community-engaging process that levels the playing field and truly honors all opinions. If leaders AND constituents can summon the discipline, courage AND compassion to build consensus on the issues, success is assured. Courage and compassion; we all know you have them in abundance – they just need to be applied in a new way.