Quick trip to the Big City

So this little country mouse traveled to the Big City today and lived to tell the tale. No, this has nothing to do with gardenfarming, really … except that this is how I spent my morning, instead of weeding, watering, and lining out daylilies.

Up at 4 am, we were, so that I could get my daughter to Logan for an early flight. No big deal, it would seem, especially for someone who used to zip on into Boston regularly for museums, shopping, entertainment, classes, seminars, back in pre-farm days. But seven years of country living has wrought some changes in my perceptions.

The traffic, for starters … four lanes in each direction of bumper-to-bumper shiny SUVs! All that speeding and weaving, all those near-misses! My heart was in my throat … I’m now more accustomed to slow pickups heavily laden with hay, to lightly-traveled roadways, to, shall we say, more polite drivers who aren’t in quite so much of a hurry and who aren’t driving vehicles equivalent in cost to a small New Hampshire home. (And while I was desperately trying to hold my own in that seething muscular river of metal, hoping to maneuver safely into the correct lane and make my exit, I was catching snippets of the radio news … “drug war” … “severed heads” … “car bombings” … adding to the feel of having stumbled into some dystopian alternate universe.)

Finally, the airport, with its choking atmosphere of jet, truck, bus and car exhausts that burn the throat, with signs everywhere insisting “Absolutely No Parking” at the dropoff, and warnings that your car may be searched; the $3.50 charge (wasn’t it $1.00 just a few years ago?) to drive through the Callahan to get outta there and head back north; the gas stations charging .20 more per gallon than we pay up here in the sticks.

Of course people live, commute, and work in that environment every day and many love it. I don’t. While the city has its charms (none of which I was able to savor on this particular trip), I was relieved to head north again and reminded how fortunate we are to live in this slower, quieter, relatively unspoiled and friendly place. Heading over Pitcher Mountain with no other vehicle in sight, I was once again knocked out by the three-state view of mountains and forests, shaggy horned cows grazing in the fields alongside the road. A graceful white egret was poised on a rock in the Ashuelot as I followed the winding river road into my little town. And when I pulled into our own driveway, the farm looked even better to me than when I left. Nice to be back home.