The long walk home.

In New Paltz, the hills remember.
Stone walls wind their way through woods like stories passed between generations — quiet, persistent, unfinished. We are a village of memory, stitched together by deeds and dreams. 

Search the town records: you’ll find enlistments logged beside apple harvests. War service and crop yields, listed side by side. As if our town always knew — survival is both battlefield and breadbasket. One feeds the nation. The other, its soul.

I returned home here.

After the sand, the smoke, the sound — I came back to the lilacs on North Chestnut, the bend in the Wallkill and the Ridge that turns red in October. I came carrying more than packs. Carrying questions, carrying comrades, carrying ghosts — a story of allegiance and of sacrifice. It was a long walk.

Some of my brothers walked hiding their truth — loving who they love in silence. Some of my sisters are still fighting to be heard in a system not built for them. Some who fought beside us — translators, allies, friends from far-off valleys — now walk in fear of deportation, their service erased from the record.

As I walk and reflect and ask myself:

What does loyalty mean, if not to fight beside someone, and then fight for them after? Is New Paltz a town that forgets its guardians? Are we a town that watches quietly? I think not… I know not! 

We remember that patriotism is not spectacle. It is responsibility.

It is the care we offer each other, especially to those who carried arms not to conquer but to protect. Democracy, after all, is not secured only in war. It is sustained in community.

We are a community where activists hold signs and farmers offer work. Where a trans vet teaches mindfulness at a yoga studio off Main Street. Where a Honduran Marine who was nearly deported now runs a food co-op. Where Pride flags and POW flags wave from the same front porch, not in contradiction, but in complicated truth. Where queer vets walk with pride and kids ask real questions about war and peace.

We are also a town that makes a day for remembrance. A day to advocate for policy that heals, not harms.  A day to honor every soldier — gay or straight, citizen or not.  On this day we teach our children that courage looks many ways: sometimes in uniform, sometimes in protest, sometimes in welcome. But we are also a town where definitions stretch. Where veterans find more than remembrance, but refuge?  Where we ensure that those who protected democracy are also embraced within it?

Let it be said that in this town, our town, we did not look away.

We look back.
We look forward,
and we stand— together — in the present.

We remember.
We act.
We carry this story on.

— A veteran’s reflection on New Paltz.