"Isn't it fun that the cars stop when you are in the cross walk?"

Coming out of the library in the center of our little town, I overheard a mom saying to her son, as the family walked down the sidewalk, "Isn't it fun that the cars stop when you are in the cross walk?"

It made me smile as I too walked down to Main Street and as I approached the road and stepped into the crosswalk, the cars on both sides stopped. I did my half wave of acknowledgment and proceeded.

I think I was at first caught by the word "fun" in this comment then by the reality of the observation. We aren't a theme park with artificial behavior and sets though this town is more touristy than many due to its many cultural attractions. I often wonder what these tourists think we are as "locals". We are for the most part just like them I came from the library picking up a couple of books and a new book on CD for my commute. I was doing routine errands.

The second part of my thoughts was this person's actual observation. It is state law that cars stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk and the local cops do at times enforce it as do the citizens. Out of state cars that are oblivious, even thought there is a sandwich board sign at the crosswalk saying to stop, will get a comment or shout. It also is just a courtesy. something we practice and something we expect from visitors.

My daughter just came back from a week in Pennsylvania with a youth group and in the city, the chaperones reminded them that the rules aren't the same and cars don''t necessarily stop for anyone.

The flip side are tourists who think this is a theme park and will just walk right out into the street also oblivious that this is a thoroughfare or people who will walk down the middle of some of the streets where shops are. It's a small town with perhaps a slower pace but really, you can't be stupid. Though as I drive through downtown, it is now intuitive and what we teach out teenage drives, to watch the road but also the walkers approaching the road.

So, I am glad if that family is having fun here. Just be safe, be courteous and if you are eating at some of the local restaurants, leave good tips for my kids.

The trees are beginning to fill in and for that brief moment in time there are beautiful views of the mountains and fields that are softened by the light green of spring.

One big thing that sold us on buying the house we are in now was the yard. The house itself is fine, much newer than the money pit we had left behind, on a quiet dead end street and located in a town where real estate retains value and is one of the better school districts in the state. But the house itself, when we saw it, had enormous bird cages in the family room and most of the room were very dark wallpaper, including rooms with only one window facing north and it has electric heat, which in New England draws is costly.





But in a town with a limited number of mid priced houses you make compromises. The irony of our decision to live here for the schools comes back to us on a regular basis as although we live less than a half mile from the high school, neither one of our kids ended up going there. As this is a public blog, I won't get into it much but there are challenges when you don't fit the mold in a very small town and though the schools are great, our kids thrived in a neighboring district 20 minutes away(you can go out of district at no cost) with a larger more diverse population and a broader curriculum.



How hind sight gets you. Had we known a dozen year ago about the job situation and the schools we might have moved somewhere very different.

But that rainy day when we looked at the house a second time, I walked to the back of the yard with the kids, while my wife was in the house. It was the softness of the trees that isolated and defined the property but didn't cut it off and the uneven grade of the land creating pathways and coves that was magical.



But living so near the woods has challenges as the woods is always seeking to reclaim the land, I never realized how much work property is, especially when your power equipment consists of a push mower and a Jeff powered rake and saw. Its good exercise and the kids pitch in when they have the time. But the clearing of all the debris from the winter and spring is where the burning season comes in.

From January through April, with a cheap permit, you can burn. So handling the dead limbs that are always falling and clipping back the bushes that seem to gain 3-4 feet of year each summer as well as disposing of the Christmas tree and wood pellet pallets becomes possible.

I think burning tends to be more of a primal guy thing, having the blazing fire and chopping and hauling wood and brush. It definitely is satisfying seeing things get cleaned up from the winter and the big piles disappear. Plus and area of grass that was previously just weed has a chance to come back seeded.



I know that when the kids are off to college and it is time to downsize there will be some things I'll miss about the house. But it will be the yard that I know I will miss.

Sitting out on the back porch listening to the wind, the animals trouping through, the views of Mt. Greylock in the winter through the bare trees, the way the fog settles between the trees and the blossoms of the trees in spring; camp fires in the back with kids gathering around; the way it connects with the woods and forest and a times becomes one.



I think by then the maintenance will have worn me a bit, as I feel it more and more now, but it will always be something special.

Movement in the Dark

On my commute home from work the is about 15 seconds when the road dips and rounds a bend and a large wind turbine is right in front of me, gracefully and rhythmically turning in the breezes. At this time of year when I reach that point in my journey it is often dark and all that can be seen is the bright blinking red beacon alerting airplanes. Then quickly I pass and it is hidden again by the woods.

But if you look a little closer you can also see that the light does not always blink in a pattern and there the slightest blur. Both of these are cause by the blades of the turbine that can't be seen but that, when they pass in front of the light, interfere with the blinking pattern and give it that blur.

[no this is not a picture of the turbine as it is difficult to snap a shot so quickly at 70 mph.]



It was on one of these trips home in the dark, having passed the turbine, that I began to think of all that happens in the dark that we don't see and sometimes have to look closely even for a sign.

Living so close to the forest, I am often reminded of this. Noises of animals heard in the night; the road kill that is not longer there in the morning; the sense that something is out in the yard when I go out in the dark for the morning paper; the shadows that disappear when I run in the early hours. All of these are life in the dark hours.

I am someone who likes the dark and is fortunate to have good vision in being able to get around with minimal light. But sometimes even I am a bit unnerved by what I can sense and just barely hear out there, and quite honestly I'd rather not shine a light and be scared for sure.

We think of life as something we can see and something that we observe or we brightly light our paths or houses or public ways, but there is so much out there that can only be picked up by sound and by sense or, like turbine, the slightest change or that we never notice at all.

So what is this picture if it is not the turbine? It isn't anything specific, just a shot in the dark. I just aimed the camera at the moon and this is what came out.