I recently returned from a lovely time in the North Country of New Hampshire as is now seemingly becoming a customary holiday. I am lucky to have the opportunity to re-acquaint myself with a familiar place.

At the beginning of my trip, my father and I took a short hike over past the Twin Mountain intersection to walk on a trail that follows the Ammonoosuc River for a short distance and culminates at a pool with cascades of water flowing in. Layers of granite line the river and look like stacks of multi-grain bread. These are old places. This has been a popular swimming hole for many years and my father tells me that he remembers heading over there on numerous occasions with my mother years ago.

On our return, I decided to take the road less travelled and scurry up the embankment to the old railroad line that runs through the area. It has been many years since the trains operated here although it does continue to get used by cross country skiers and snow mobilers in the winter. Before the automobile, access to these areas was almost always by train. Families packed up their trunks and boarded the trains in New York or Boston and then spent the summers in Franconia, Bethlehem and other small towns in the area. Huge hotels dotted the landscape. The notches were split up the middle with tracks. Up to ten trains a day rumbled back and forth.

As I walked along these empty tracks I thought about how vitally important these railroads were to the development of the area back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Transporting people and supplies to and from hard to reach places. Many of the early travelers to the huge hotels that once dominated the landscape arrived on these trains. Huge swaths of forest were cut down and transported out of the area by train to the urban centers of New England. The area was very different back then. To a large degree, it is now a very undeveloped part of the country compared to those early days. There is so much more forest and much less industry.

While wandering on those tracks I thought about the massive amount of embodied energy still in place. How many man hours it took to produce all the steel for the tracks and spikes and the effort to cut down the trees and process them into the cross timbers that hold up the tracks. The hillsides that were torn down to make space for the tracks and vast amount of coal that fueled these beasts all had tremendous costs.

Now, these tracks lay unused, a relic of a bygone era. What does this say of us? How much effort do we as a species put into creating things that do not last? Have we not learned our lessons?

My short journey on those tracks tells me quite profoundly that we are not making the right decisions. Fifty years from now what will we no longer be using that took millions and billions of dollars to build, projects that used precious resources, caused terrible pollution and environmental destruction and took great effort to create that no longer is functional? We so easily build and then tear down. Houses and other buildings are erected that have 20-30 year lifespans. They are built to not last when we are very capable of creating structures that can last longer and are healthier and less environmentally destructive.

Let's learn our lessons and focus on sustainability!