NOTCH HILL

We usually drive far more highways than we use roads. Roads are intimate and local. Roads meander. Roads pause for things. They run under deep groups pf trees and let the shadows play on their surface. Roads go down by small rivers, even streams. Really intimate and quiet roads sometimes give way to a stream and allow it to cross them. Drivers slow down and the water splashes from the wheels and children bounce up and down in back seats and laugh as the water arcs out on either side. Roads allow houses and gardens to be close to them and animals to saunter across them.

Highways are so very different. Highways are restless and arrogant and assertive. They are endlessly bossy. Not a mile goes by but they are flinging information at you. “Yield”! They shriek! No U Turns! They yell. Highways dislike houses and push them hundreds of yards to either side. Highways detest trees and human beings and small communities.

I am thinking of a certain road that winds into the hills and leaves the highway far behind. It climbs a ridge and then drops into a rich and fertile valley. There are farms where half a day’s chores are done as we drive slowly by. Someone waves a greeting, and there is a store with nails and bread and ice cream among other humble things jumbled together. Across the fields there is an old wooden church with a tiny bell tower and gaping windows. From the step where the door once was we can see the rusted rails in the grass where the railroad ran, halting here to drink greedily from the water tower that stood here, its wooden foundation now lost in the grass.

Nowadays if you’ve paused here on a leisurely evening family drive you can suddenly hear a long mournful howl on the evening air. It tells you that a few miles from here a mile long behemoth of rail cars is thundering ponderously through a neighbouring valley, their wheels rattling and squealing on the gleaming steel rails, bound for places much more important but, alas, not half as beautiful.

IMAGE

Frankslake Lutheran Church, built out of fieldstone, near Frankslake, SK

Photo: Nancy Anderson