i grew up in the country. true, it’s near a suburb, and yes it only takes about twenty minutes to get to all my favourite targets, starbucks, and anthropologie…
but to get to the house i grew up in, you leave the suburbs behind, go down the hill, cross the railroad tracks and the river, wind your way up through the hills on a small two lane road. you pass the house that old man lived in, the one who sat on his porch every afternoon when i passed by, on the bus and later in my car coming home from high school. he died while i was in college. up ahead, twist your way through the hairpin turn, coastly gently down and speeding back up around the curve. you drive along the road, the brush close to the right shoulder, the rocks close to the left. horses graze in the field to the right. along a straightaway and up again through the woods to the four lane stop at the dirt road. somewhere along the time, it became a gravel road, and then paved, but still with gravel pieces tumbling like weeds across the road.
slowly, then, around the curve (or fast, if you prefer, but if you’re like me and grew up driving this road, you watch out for those of us that take it fast, and just a smidge in the oncoming lane.) the road sidelines the creek here, and deer graze in the brush or in the shallow rocky water.
ahead of you is a new road. it used to be that you came through past the creek and then curved to the left, working your way along the rocky shoulder with a drop off to the right, another hairpin turn. when i was in middle school, they straightened that. it’s the straightaway that signals that you are close to home. speed up there hill and out into the fields toward the house.
i came home for a brief holiday that other day, and was dismayed to learn that they’ve closed the road further to the north. they’re straightening it through the hairpin turn part, from where the old man lived up through the twisty part. and i’m heartbroken. because that was a fun road, and no one was ever hurt on it. i never saw an accident. it wasn’t unsafe. but the curves don’t fit with the gridlines of the county, with the structure of the suburb, and with the new subdivisions going in south of my parents, it means more traffic, more cause for reckless driving. but it’s the loss of a beautiful part of the county, one that follows the old mission road (hence it’s name, ha), from the indian camps to the south to the missions of the north. along old cowpaths and along the creek and river. and we’ve lost that sense of wonder about the beauty of driving through a part of wild untouched by modern convenience. the houses are all at least twenty, thirty years old. there are no shops, no strip malls. but we’re about to lose that, and with that, we lose the deer, the hawks, the curious bobcats that might sneak into a yard at night, the owls… they’ll leave, and what are we left with? suburban drivers who can’t drive along a two lane twisted road because it’s inconvenient. and i’m heartbroken for the loss of what i – and everyone i know who has ever driven to my parents house – know and love.
growing up is hard to do, but growing up and losing what you know is even harder. if i could say one thing to the developers, its this: let the road grow organic. let people learn to drive it. don’t take away the wilderness. next, you’ll turn the old man’s property into a riverfront park, and i will never again think i see him, sitting on his porch in his faded jeans, old denim shirt, watching the school bus grumble by.
it’s too late for the road, but it doesn’t have to be too late for the rest of it.
{this picture was taken just before the hairpin turn… obviously just south of the construction zone :(}