A Quiet Day on the Ridge

65°f/19A°C, light overcast after yesterday's rainy, humid day.

Between rains

It was quiet yesterday on our hill. Usually on Sundays we hear a lot of vehicles on the ridge--- hear but don't see as the trees, fully leafed out, completely hide us from view now. Fortunately the ridge road is a third of a mile away anyway, so we are pretty private at any time of the year.

Sunday traffic generally begins around 9:45am, as neighbors make their way to the little church that is about a half mile from our house. A half dozen vehicles--trucks mostly, and sometimes a side-by-side, rumble across the gravel road. One family doesn't go to this church because apparently there were theological interpretation differences, so they drive about 6 miles to another church. The rest, all younger than Larry and me by about 20-30 years, attend the little white church their family helped establish over 100 years ago.  Generations of their ancestors are buried in the cemetery beside the church, and they keep those graves decorated and mowed.

Mount Hope Church, a half mile away, is visible from the top of my driveway in fall and winter.

Sometimes someone has to work on Sunday. One might have to go to his job at the local aluminum plant; another might get called out for his job on a line crew for the power company, or one might have a sale at the livestock auction she manages. But most have Sundays off. And most go to church.

After church the road noise increases. Returnees, visitors, people out for Sunday drives, four-wheelers and other off-roaders buzz back and forth. Sometimes there's a "poker run", whatever that is, and our road is a popular route apparently; sometimes 20 or 30 pass in a pack, which drives our dogs crazy.

A favorite photo of the two old trees on our high knob, just alongside the road.

This isn't to say there are traffic jams on our gravel road. When I say it's busy, with the exception of the poker runs, there may be 20 people passing by. But what a difference from when we moved here! Back then the road was impassable most of the year and the only people driving it, or attempting to, was us and rarely our only neighbor, who usually went the other, more passable way out from his house. We only went that way in summer because the rest of the year the road between our houses was a mire of mudholes and, well, mud. So we could hear a vehicle coming from half a mile or more away, and would stop what we were doing to watch in surprise to watch it pass. (The land was more clear then, and we could see the road year-round.)

But yesterday there was little movement on the road after the "church traffic". Rain, you see. It kept people home apparently. No fun being out on a four-wheeler or whatever in pouring rain. The quiet reminded me of those peaceful years before off-road vehicles were even invented, before we had more neighbors,  before the road finally got on the list to be maintained regularly, before so many home deliveries by UPS and FedEx.

Life, and travel on the ridge, has gotten easier over the past 50 years. I suppose with improvements must come some things we don't like so well. Sometimes I would gladly trade the ease of travel for the rough old road of those early years,  and for the quiet and isolation we enjoyed then. But we're not getting younger,  and I doubt we could manage walking in with the groceries and other supplies from half a mile away any more.

So we take the bad with the good, and endure the Sunday road buzz as best we can. I am grateful, though, for those Sundays like yesterday,  when the road is as quiet as a weekday. As quiet as in the old days.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.