I walked in the woods behind our house this morning to see the colors in the changing landscape and to stand again on a ridge overlooking a basin dotted with homes and farms. The ridge runs along what was, until several weeks ago, the back end of our property.

I have always loved this part of our land because of the view it offers. Standing on the ridge, you can see a long way: farm animals grazing in a pasture and waterfowl gliding across the neighbor's pond.

Occasionally a car or truck travels the road that winds through this lowland; this morning, though, I walked for a half hour before the sound of an engine broke the quiet.

My favorite part of this scene is a series of undulating hills on the south side of the valley, all about the same height and spaced evenly apart, as if carved by a sculptor. Their similar shapes make them seem unnatural, like a paint-by-numbers landscape. But their uniformity is more likely the unwitting work of a glacier that passed through these parts thousands of years ago.

Partially shaded by trees, these three hills are lush green in the summer and golden brown in the fall.

I intentionally went to the ridge this morning to see the view again. Earlier this month, we sold several acres of these woods to our neighbor's son, who used to play there with my two boys.

The three of them spent countless hours in the woods and along the ridge, riding their dirt bikes, playing ice hockey on the pond, picking berries, hunting, building a tree house. The neighbor boy is grown now, with a family; he and his wife will build a home overlooking the vale.

As I stood on the ridge, remembering these things, I thought about how the woods will be different. By the time the leaves turn again, there will be a house, and all the things that accompany a growing family, in these woods. The view of the valley, though, will remain.

Thinking of this, I am reminded of the early 19th-century writer Henry David Thoreau, whose encampment in the woods at Walden Pond made "Walden" a household word. Even a national bookstore chain bears its name.

In the essay "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," written about his stay at Walden Pond, Thoreau tells us that even though the land on which he lived was owned by an industrious farmer, its beauty belongs to those who treasure it.

He wrote, "I lean on the fence, I watch the colors of the fields change with the summer. There's a man who works each one for me. He calls himself the owner, but all he does is work the fields and pay the mortgage and the taxes. And all he gets is the harvest. All the beauty of the farm is mine."

Heartened, I returned home, knowing the beauty of the land will still be there for those who pause to enjoy it.