There is a dirt road that runs by our property, which being the only dirt road of any length in town has become something of a destination for those taking a walk.  It is also a commuter short cut.  The juxtaposition of those enjoying nature and those enjoying the lack of a posted speed limit is sometimes awkward.  It is made more awkward be those few other people, who are using the road as a road, but aren’t abusing it as a shortcut.

There are a lot of people on it.  Currently, it has a lovely tendency towards the art of balancing rocks.  You know, those sculptures created by taking one rock and balancing it on another and the next and the next.  I sort of hope the trend continues.  They are, I believe, at this point communal sculptures with people adding new ones or adding to existing ones.  To the best of my knowledge none have been deliberately knocked down either, which is something of a miracle it seems to me these days.  I don’t object to them, as long as they stay next to the road, though the majority are on our side of the road and therefore possibly on our land.

And we have the dog walkers (the corgi contingent in particular), the power walkers, the walkers who are out because the doctor said so, the people enjoying the walk, and so forth.  Only a rare horse these days.  The commuter traffic makes trying to ride a horse dangerous.  What is odd about that, of course, is that chances are the speeding commuters are also the walkers, and probably complain about the traffic.

There are also the people whom one simply knows; the cars one recognizes at a certain time each day.  I had a pleasant chat with one such today, he was delivering a load of firewood to a neighbor, I was contemplating the woods.  Nice guy, we agreed that the only reason to stay in Connecticut was because a) family b) we loved the land here.  He’d be in New Zealand otherwise, apparently.  Definite Swamp Yankee, and no insult in the term; I doubt he’d ever build a balanced stone sculpture, though he’d likely leave it alone on the strength of the ‘due unto others as….’. He didn’t care much for the traffic, but understood why people love the walk.

It is an odd community, not sure how much of the ‘middle’ is left these days though.