I have deep roots. My ancestors were one of the early families to settle in the place I live. We’ve been here so long there’s a town named for my father’s side of the family, and the original “home place” in now owned by the state conservancy.

My maternal grandmother, for most of her life, lived, died and is buried on the same piece of ground where she was born. Yes, my roots are sunk deep into the soil of this place.

The building where she went to school until the 8th grade stood quiet for many years until it became a Mennonite church, where we attended services on Sunday because making the 25 mile round trip to attend “our church” was a waste.

Six miles up the road you’ll pass another Mennonite Church. This house of worship was where my paternal grandparents attended school until they reached an age where they either married or were needed to work the farm.

My maternal grandfather was an “outsider”. My great-uncle returned from his wonderings in northern Pennsylvania with him in tow. They worked the farm and the local sawmills until the government started the CCC camp to build a dam not far from the farm. As the only girl among the five surviviing children, my grandmother “Jo” was as strong-willed and independent as any woman of today, and wanted her family always within reach.

I was always in awe of the people of my grandmother’s generation. When they were born, most people still travelled by horseback, horse drawn wagon, or you hopped the train at the crossing. Most of your days were spent in the pursuit of growing or preserving food, or it would be a lean hungry winter. There were cows to milk, clothes to launder by hand, bread to make, cream to churn, three meals a day to prepare for a large family, plus all the back breaking manual labor of planting and harvesting the crops. Most were barely literate or had a minimal education.

By the time of their deaths, almost everyone had phones, cars, mechanized farm equipment, cable and satellite TV, that got more than three channels (if you turned the antenna just so and the weather was just right, you got four), and the world was beginning to go digital.

As a child I spent any time that I was not cooped up in suburban schools, on the farm. Part of the house was log and the newer part was frame. The log part of the house had a “kitchen loft” that had been sleepings space in the day, but now was used for storage. I could climb the steep stairs and visit with people who were long gone, but I took the tidbits of information I heard from the adults about Jack, Dewey or Hattie Shotgun, and spin my own tales. There was no indoor plumbing and the electric was not installed until 1965. The water was carried from the spring, we cooked on a wood cookstove, or an LP stove (oh the luxury). The house was heated with wood and coal stoves. Telephones had party lines and you didn’t need an area code. I hand milked cows, churned butter, helped make cottage cheese, worked in the huge garden, harvested hay without a baler, butchered chickens and turkeys, and ran the woods and fields with my dogs, wild as any deer.

In 1925 the electric company built a dam. The lake behind the dam soon became a place where rich city people travelled by train to stay at their summer “cottages”. That was when we became the state’s vacation land.

Now…now I am 51 years old. The family farm is split between the three children (there was no will), the lake with its quaint summer cottages has become a thriving commercial success. Houses stand eave to eave and are more akin to mini-hotels than cottages. The mountains that were once glorious riots of color in the fall are now bare of trees and covered with “hi-line houses” for people that could not afford lakefront. (Not that there’s much left). We have at least one sewage spill a summer polluting the lake from the system not large enough to handle high volumes of sewage. We have a Wal-Mart Supercenter, 2 Burger Kings, 3, or is it 4 Subways, 2 McDonalds, an internet cafe, and more antique stores than you can shake a stick at.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my modern conveniences, though there are days when I would just as soon throw my cell phone and laptop out the door and let the next log truck flatten both…but when the electric goes off due to accident or storm, it forces me to slow down…read a book that I hold in my hands using a oil lamp for light, play cards, or a board game, or actually holding a conversation with another person.

Without electricity today’s world stops. I sit in my overstuffed chair and transport my mind back to my grandmother’s farm. It’s 4:30am and we have just finished milking. I’m eight years old and my roots sink a little deeper into the loamy soil.