There is a road which I have run, walked, biked, driven, skied and ridden on horseback with/out a saddle. It runs from Walden Pond to my Mother's front door. The end of it used to mark the half way point to my Father's and Grandparent's house, before they all moved away.
When I was a teenager, it seemed an endless stretch of hills and tight curves, especially on a bike. Walking along it during a hot spring day to Walden was a seasonal right of passage. Later friends and boyfriends would accompany me on such walks.
I had one close friend who lived along this road. Her family was the one with the horses. We'd ride the endless conservation trails through the town and walk along the side of the road, in the fields you can see in this picture. We'd jump over the stone walls and fallen trees along the way. They were fox hunting horses, with powerful rear ends. We also tested ourselves and the horses by barrel racing, but that is another story.
Riding bikes along this road happened in every season. To other friend's houses, family, Walden, Woolworth's for some fries at the lunch counter or just to be free. When I was quitting smoking as a late teenager, I remember having dreams about driving down this road, perfectly lined with it's parallel stone walls and sugar maples. It was like being in Nature's ballroom surrounded by infinity mirrors. Only in my dream the maples were cigarettes standing on end, taunting me as I tried to make it down this stretch of road without stopping for a smoke.
In the fall, the fields would yield huge amount of vegetables and the trees along the road would turn brilliant colors. Deer would gather in the far corners of the fields and graze on the remains of the harvest, and fox would hunt the rodents going after the decaying produce.
When blizzards hit, and this town was notorious for not wanting to salt its roads, the plows took there time to get to the secondary roads. It was safe to ski from my Mother's to Walden on the road and fun to bushwhack back through the conservation trails. There is one big hill in the middle of this road that makes it rewarding to climb and fly down in each direction!
Spring was when I'd start to run on the roads, after skiing had ended and before the mud had cleared the trails in woods. When the sugar buckets appeared, as you can see they have been hung now, it was a sure sign that Spring was upon us, as sure as the Sun Rise Service was going to be held in Flint's field on Easter Morning. The first person to ever teach me how to tap a tree was Ken Olsen, founder of DEC and our neighbor across a 5-Way intersection at the end of this road. He took great pride in tapping his trees and introducing New England traditions to the neighborhood kids.
So tonight ,when I drove the 8 miles from my house to my mother's house for dinner, and over this stretch of road, I took notice of the buckets. Not only were they hanging from almost every sugar maple lining the road, when I stopped to take this picture I could hear the sap running steadily into the buckets! Other than the birds chirping, and the Great Blue Heron's squawking, this is one of my youthful sensations of Spring.
Good Night, stretch of road, G'night!
No comments:
Post a Comment