Why I love my road

You see, roads are not something you want to talk about before municipal elections because roads are historically a line of contention of whether one gets elected or not; in other words, the case of ‘what’s in it for me’. So now as the dust settles—can’t resist a bad pun— and that our local Hillier Hall, way down here in Slab Creek Hollow, has passed the mark of carrying the footsteps of voters in over 150 local elections, maybe it’s okay to bring up the theme of the road I live along. Mostly it’s because it’s not a complaint.

Der innerer Schweinehund is one of those impossible to translate German phrases, which works for me at this time of year. Simply it refers to the inner couch potato that seems to possess some us as soon as first frost hits. The symptoms are deep urges to haul a good book back from the library or alternately binge on Netflix while under a blanket and with the possible accompaniment of a wood stove. Incidentally I’ve been researching these phenomena for a few decades and plan on devoting a chapter or two on the topic in my memoirs. That is, if I get around to writing those memoirs, since the inspiration to do so also seems to coincide with the time of year when der innerer Scweinehund rules. So if I’m spotted nestled in a favourite cafe or watering hole, be sure to note the notepad I have at hand—since getting out of the house and working beyond the range of the woodstove is all about dedication to craft, pushing back those impulses to keep one’s slippers on, another quirk that anyone who works from home will recognize.

It’s when I am following the conventions of the season and loading in firewood, anticipating a snug and productive winter season at the same time, that for some unpredictable reason I begin to ponder my road and all its dichotomies. You see, Station Road actually began way before there was a train station. Historically, it began as a short stretch leading in from what was then still part of Danforth’s road, the link that followed the County shoreline as close as possible as a security measure since Lake Ontario’s shoreline was part of our defensible borders since the history of us as a British colony. So there’s that.

Prior to Hillier Hall and a train station was a one-room school built of hard limestone, which once sat directly across from the front door of my plain, worker’s cottage abode, built circa 1815. There is a delightful school photo taken early 1900s that sets a ubiquitous mood to the clump of elderly lilac that continue to bloom, surviving generations beyond those who were the student subjects of that particular photo. So today during school season, the passing of the school bus by my front door seems to conjure that past/present deliberation of thought.

I love my road because it is a short road, a narrow unpaved road, yet a road of important industry shuttling farm equipment and produce, also finished product and raw materials to and from manufacturing operations. It would take a few pages to list the size of vehicles that use this road. Some are horse-driven, some farm machines so large they barely slip under telephone wires; many bicycles and there are eighteen-wheelers from Quebec that slowly arrive to deliver small chicks to the poultry operation down the way: weeks go by when similar trucks return to carry grown birds to market. That exercise has fuelled my imagination about career opportunities for full time chicken catchers, those folks who roll into the farm buildings at night to collect the birds while the birds are quiet and less prone to stampede. Then the catchers vanish by day and onto the next address.

In early spring there is a run of snow drops— tiny flowers that straggle along a weathered fence—at the same time as the beaver dam backs up the water contained in the section of the drowned forest of Hillier. Also with the flowers arrives the spring chorus of frogs that sound throughout the section of wetlands that my road runs through. The opening of the wineries early season means the poignant, real-life paradox of limos with seats filled with happy visitors patiently waiting for a tractor to pass, pulling, in what is known in farming parlance, a shit spreader.

In summer evenings the great blue heron can be seen descending with majesty into the creek that runs along the road. The watershed through which my road travels, empties a vast section within the Pleasant Bay drainage system. In prehistoric times the watershed was both navigatable by canoe and an abundant source of fresh water and fish, a place that appealed as inland shelter for families that once inhabited former, now ancient village sites. The archaeological evidence of early people impacts on me in the same emotional stride as do early photos.

So really, as I stand here in the midst of a winter preparation ritual, I am able to sense both time and timelessness in the same instance. And also, come to think, my road is more than just a conveyance. It’s a living narrative, a daily changing account, a record of the who and whats of time. No wonder I love it.