The Road Less Travelable
Our road. It's not exactly a super-hiway. Actually, it's not exactly a road. It's more of a two-lane pig path with grass growing in the middle, even though it bears a state road number and is "maintained" all the way between the hardtop roads it connects. Our place lies right in the middle of this four miles of jeep trail. The eastern half is almost level (after the first tenth of a mile) and follows the creek, never rising more than a few feet above it. Piece of cake.
But to the west of us, the road ascends almost four hundred feet in elevation before it gets to the hardtop, and there are eleven very blind curves along the way. In winter, it is treacherous and we usually take the eastern route, even though it adds some miles and minutes to wherever we are going.
This morning, the Clarke Gas Company delivery truck showed up close on the heels of our weekend snow storm. I heard the sound of a heavy machine approaching and assumed it was the hi-way folks come back to scrape the snow again. But no, there was the big white tanker trying to pull the grade up our snow-covered driveway in reverse; and after several attempts, he gave up and moved on up the road -- as if he would try to get his largeness up the canyon west of here to service the next customer. I could have told him he was courting disaster.
Twenty minutes and a quarter mile of reverse gear later, he comes rear-end first through the woods around the bend, back toward the house. I know he would have loved nothing better than to pull up into our drive and turn the heck around. But alas: too much weight, too little traction. And so, bless his cervical mobility, the poor guy had to back all the way to Griffith Creek Road, a mile of gravel trail east of us, before he could turn that rig around.
And the heck of it is, we've burned so much wood since the last tank fill that we'd not used enough propane to warrant a fill-up anyway. Give us a call next time, Gas-guy. We'll let you know if we're getting low. And give you the pig path road report.
Comments
Ah, your entry brings back memories of when we lived in Hillsboro, NH, and the oil truck had the darnedest time getting up our steep, curvy, fringed-with-trees driveway. Our first winter in NH, we didn't know (as new homeowners) that if we wanted to keep warm, we had to do two things: first, hire someone to plow and SAND our driveway; second, keep a open shoveled path to the oil spigot. Of course, that was the winter when our driveway looked like a luge-route and we had 5 feet of snow in our front yard...
Anyhow, I digress. Now we live in the "big city" of Keene, NH, and we rent. The oil spigot is at the front of the house, easily accessible from a short (easily shovelable) bit of sidewalk; the city plows the street. And when the oil guys come, we put the bill in our landlord's box: not our problem. I miss the woods of Hillsboro, but I don't miss being a homeowner. Thanks for the reminder!
Posted by: Lorianne | January 29, 2004 6:07 AM
We have cow paths in our neck of the woods. Back easterners talk funny--LOL.
Posted by: Cop Car | January 29, 2004 6:58 AM
I have to agree with Cop Car. I'm not sure pigs make a path, at least of the thousands I've known, none did. It might not look like it on the surface but pigs are the free-thinkers of the barnyard crowd. Sheep will make a path, cows will make a path. Pigs will go their own way(s). - Tom
Posted by: Tom Montag | January 29, 2004 7:32 AM
If pigs do intend to follow this path, they'd best be on the svelte side; I spent much of my time on this road wondering how my none-too-large sedan was going to negotiate a path seemingly about one-third its width.
Posted by: CGHill | January 29, 2004 12:45 PM
nice road. just the kind of road my pals and i like to find for motorcycle exploring. i should note that our motorcycles have mufflers, not like the loud-pipe harley-davidsons you frequently hear on the brp.
anyhow, i wanted to make a suggestion regarding your excellent photo-blogging. it seems that you use the "alt" tag sometimes but only for copyright. how about using "alt" for a caption/description of the picture? i like them myself, but this can be very useful for blind surfers, since there are devices that will read the alt tags and include them in the braille text or spoken text that the browsers provide for the user. just an idea.
also, for at least one photo, you have a small version posted and a separate link to a larger picture. you can also put a hyperlink on the small image, linking it to the larger image.
just my $0.02.
Posted by: chris hall | January 30, 2004 11:52 AM
I'm not sure what I liked most ... the rich textures of the icy roadway, or the subtle wisdom shared with your "cervical mobility" comment, or the gentle stinger at the end. All of it was good, clean, and interesting reading.
you are like a sip of spring water for a parched throat ... good stuff
Posted by: ntexas99 | January 30, 2004 9:42 PM