'Simply hold still'

"View {of the Connecticut River Valley} from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow,'' by Thomas Cole in 1836.

''A farmer...has an enormous innate need to simply hold still, to keep what he's got, to limit his 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 wintertime, or drive spiles into to bleed out maple sap in sugar time? No use, at all. In the Connecticut Valley, this Yankee trait has saved a lot of beauty.''

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