We walk a path that leads toward the pond. The ground is rutted, our feet slosh in the wet snow. It’s a gingerly, slow pace.

Fast moving water rushes into a spring-fed pond — a swimming pond come summer. We try to imagine a summer day with warm sun and the exhilaration of a cold-water plunge. Imagination fails. We reckon only with our own cold breath and sodden toes.

We circle back past toward the house. There is a wide expanse of fallen pines where big equipment is taking down diseased trees while the lumber is still useful. The land and house now under construction are part of cherished acres that abut the Quabbin Reservoir and Harvard Forest.

Only few months ago, this place was another family’s retreat, what they called their “camp.” Over the years, the family cleared paths, conserved wetlands and built a functional and easily maintained house with low ceilings, small windows and a well-supplied galley kitchen. When they gave up their camp, all their seasonal toys were left behind : snow shoes, skis, ice skates, board games, knotted rugs, stuffed quails and a statuesque moose. Outbuildings still housed working vehicles: tractors, riding lawn mowers, a six-seater “mule” for circling the property. A place fully provisioned and so dearly loved.

Now, the new owners, our adult children, are taking down walls and raising ceilings to create a new interior that fits their vision and a full-time occupancy. They envision the stuff of nature, compositions of earth and sky, comfort and beauty. They see it as it will be. As it is becoming.

I do not see what will be. I see what is.

They’ve done it before. Ten years ago, they bought a property in Orange. It came with a partly demolished house condemned by the Health Department, expelling a family that left behind heaps of trash, rotting mounds of waste, broken bits of toys and playthings. When I looked at it, I didn’t see the potential expanse of pond and fields, of a winding deck that tracked clouds and the songs of spring peepers. They did.

They saw what follows after the dumpster loads have come and gone — the cleared scrub and cultivated meadows. They imagined a copper heron weather vane reflecting the light atop a chimney spire. And most recently, the addition of a barn he built, as a tribute to wood and light, a workshop for him, a gym for her, a meeting space for neighbors. Not knowing that they would soon move again, the barn was host to a father’s funeral and an 80th celebration of life.

It’s a true gift to see what isn’t. Beyond what is. To see the potential that rugged labor and skillful craft may bring. To see beyond a rutted path, mud-splattered pants and viewless windows.

And now, on a different sort of journey, I wonder who among us sees the potential for peace in the rubble and death squads of war? Who sees a path for trust in the bodies of hate? Who sees the music makers instead of the monsters?

Who sees the sky lights of hope inside the trauma? I want to see that with you. I want to believe in what can be instead of what is.

Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.