Turning onto Peckins Road, about a mile from our house, April gasped.
“Look at the trees. Every single one has been butchered!”
I switched on the high beams. Stripped of their summer leaves, branches hung at grotesque angles like splintered limbs not fully amputated. Every cedar, maple, sycamore, and oak stood mangled and scarred.
“What happened?” I shouted. “When we left home three hours ago, everything was fine. It looks like a monster has rampaged through here.”
The answer came before dawn, as grinding gears echoed across the fields and heavy truck tires pounded the gravel road in front of our house. Never had traffic been so audible through our bedroom window. The trees had been slashed to create greater width on the road, so that two gravel-bearing trucks coming from opposite directions could pass without one pulling off to the side or slowing down.
As each truck passed and the whining of its engine faded, a pulsating beat, like a jackhammer cracking cement, ricocheted off the walls of our barn and slammed against the house. We closed all the windows. Every familiar, beloved sound of our land had been overpowered and erased. The stream maneuvering between mossy stones, the crickets chattering in the grass, and the bullfrogs bellowing from the pond were indecipherable now as a mining crew one-half mile down the road crushed larger boulders into gravel-sized fragments.
Just last year we had acted on the dream of starting a retreat center; a place that could offer rest, beauty and revitalization to people on the front lines of social change movements. The absence of township zoning laws had permitted us to start The Leaven Center without any bureaucratic hoops to jump through. But lack of zoning also meant that anyone, anywhere, in that township could develop a racetrack, a truck stop, a hog farm, or – in the case of our neighbors down the road – a massive gravel pit.
Peckins Road dead-ends at a dam, so every truck that roared into the pit roared back out again. The time between one truck engine receding and another approaching was so fleeting, I could hear or think about nothing else. When a moment of surcease descended, it held only dread that the hallowed silence would soon disappear. Anxious to regain some degree of control, I announced to April that I would begin documenting the high speed of the trucks on Peckins Road. And then present that incriminating data to county or state officials.
“There are children living on this road,” I said. “Maybe, we can get a petition going.”
I took a folding chair, a small notebook, and a stopwatch to our pond field and set up my station near the road. I noted that every three minutes a new truck came tearing down the road.
My vigilance did not increase my sense of control. Nor did it lead to a petition drive. It only exacerbated my obsessive focus on the pit and the fear that it had stolen our hope for a natural refuge where people could come to find rest and renewal. April and I wondered aloud if our retreat center dream was imploding.
Recognizing that we had lost all perspective, we invited our friend Whitney for lunch. She had fallen in love with these twenty acres the first time she set foot on the land, believing as we did that this place was perfect for a retreat center. During the meal, we refrained from sharing our despair about the gravel pit or our preoccupation with the trucks. When we finished eating, April asked Whitney if she would do us a great favor.
“Would you take a walk on the land, noting what you see and hear, and then return to tell us what you experienced?”
Whitney looked quizzically at us and laughed. “I’m not sure what the two of you are up to, but why not? Walking this land is always a gift,” she said.
Throwing a shawl around her shoulders, and taking a pen and small notebook from her purse, Whitney headed out the door.
When she returned, we made a pot of tea and sat in the living room looking out on the stream.
“Let me tell you about my walk,” she said. “First, I went up to the orchard and sat on the bench by the cherry tree. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, a deer was not three yards away, munching softly on fallen pears. He pretended not to see me, but then sniffed the air, stomped his hoof and leapt into the field. In the distance I heard the horn of a truck and its tires on the gravel road.”
April and I glanced sideways at each other and then quickly back to Whitney.
“Next, I walked the long path through the meadows to the ridge above the river. Small white and purple flowers were growing along the path. I contemplated going down to the river, but decided to stay on the trail to see how high the white pines had grown since last year. Just as I turned, a flock of turkeys exploded out of a large maple to my right, their heavy, squawking bodies flying miraculously high above the crest of trees. And I heard the tires of a truck coming down the road and another not far behind.”
Whitney reached for her teacup and asked if we could heat some more water.
“I sat for awhile by the edge of the pond,” she continued, “watching a striped fish dart in and out of the weeds. White fluff from the cattails floated across the water. Another truck went by and I heard the sound of drilling down the road. “
Whitney leaned toward us, laying her notebook to one side.
“I knew immediately why you asked me to do this,” she said smiling, her face surprisingly radiant. “I saw the trucks on Peckins Road as I approached your house today. On my walk, I heard the trucks and felt annoyed by their loud, intrusive noises. But those interruptions were fleeting. I reminded myself that the trucks will pass on by, but this land with its waters, woods, and meadows remains steadfast. This beautiful, resilient land is far stronger than all the trucks that will ever come and go.”
“It seems to me there are two crucial questions for you to wrestle with,” Whitney said. “Can you reclaim this land as your home even if the trucks don’t cease? And, can you welcome – without apology – the people who come here?”
April nodded as Whitney stated the questions, but she didn’t say anything in response. I wanted to cry as Whitney was voicing her first question. I laughed out loud when she stated the second.
“You’ve nailed it, Whitney,” I replied. “I will be so tempted to greet each retreat center guest with an apology – calling attention to the trucks, pointing in the direction of the pit, and explaining how gloriously peaceful the place used to be.”
“What are you thinking, April?” Whitney asked. April looked down at the stream and then directly at each of us before responding.
“There is a very good chance that city dwellers will still find this land refreshingly remote and quiet.”
April paused and reached for my hand.
“It’s up to us, Melanie,” she said. “The gravel pit may not change, but we can.”
© 2020 Melanie S. Morrison