Walking downstream

Walking upstream or uphill or downhill from my house can be accomplished alone, but walking downstream requires company. I've walked that route alone just once and every car that came along stopped to see if I needed a ride--it just doesn't look like the kind of walk anyone would take voluntarily. I also need someone to keep me walking through the steep spots when I'm wondering why I shouldn't just turn around and mosey back down the hill. Strange but true: following the creek downstream requires walking up the steepest, twistiest, orneriest stretch of road within a mile of my house.

It's also the most populated route. It's possible to take a two-mile round-trip hike upstream without ever passing a human dwelling, but the downstream walk leads past six or eight houses, some hidden in the hollows of the hills and others right up next to the road. It starts with a left turn at the end of my driveway, where I am generally greeted by the dogs that live at the little house across the road. One particularly friendly basset hound will follow any fool who wanders past, but at least he's pleasant company. The first curve in the road leads past another house where an elderly doddering border collie guards the road, challenging every creature that walks or drives by. That dog sits all day with its nose just touching the edge of the road on a sharp blind curve where there's really no room for two vehicles to pass--it's a wonder it has lived to get so old.

The border collie and the basset go through their usual challenge-and-response ritual, the elderly collie always ending up as top dog. Sometimes the basset turns back and sometimes he keeps going. Either way, the road goes on, dividing the neighbor's hay meadow on the left from the steep cow pasture on the right. Usually the cows are out of sight up on top of the hill, but sometimes a few cows pause in their chewing to watch me pass. All summer we've been seeing indigo buntings right through here, so we assume they're nesting nearby. Goldfinches and butterflies flitter through the tall weeds in the hay meadow, and in the spring, red-winged blackbirds perch on the fenceposts around the cow meadow.

The road stays level at first, curving gently through the hollow, but then the creek disappears behind a hill while the road goes straight up--except it's not straight at all. First it curves to the left and then to the right and then sharply to the right again around the blind curve that forces us to drive by faith all year round. The road squeezes between a steep bluff falling down toward the creek on the left and a wooded slope rising on the right. There's no shoulder and nowhere to run should a car suddenly appear around the curve, but fortunately, traffic on this road is pretty thin. My road doesn't really go anywhere except home for the few people who live out here.

They're farmers mostly, although no one really makes a living as a farmer out here so they all have other jobs. The biggest spread is visible from the walk up the hill, an old white farmhouse surrounded by outbuildings of every kind: corncribs and cattle barns and pig barns and tractor sheds, the sort of neat and tidy farm you'd see in a documentary about America's noble farmers. This is the old home place for the family that owns most of the property along our road; one son's family lives up on the hill where the cattle run and the other son's family lives across the road with the friendly basset hound. When he's not farming, the basset's owner is a riverboat pilot, which lends a sort of pioneer spirit to the area, although it's not as romantic an occupation as one might think. He spends weeks at a time playing cards in cold, cramped cabins of boats pushing barges full of coal.

Back up the hill the road continues, up and up without a break while my pace slows and my heart-rate quickens. Reaching the top is a triumph, but the walk's not over yet: the road leads downhill gently through deep green woods that fall away toward the creek on the left and rise up the hill on the right. Just past the curve I can still see the spot where the school bus slid off the road, but the woods are quickly healing that wound. No houses are visible here, which makes it a perfect spot for people to stop their cars and dump loads of trash over the side of the hill; if you look down at just the right angle, you can see an old recliner among the underbrush. I'll never understand why people mistake the countryside for a landfill.

This is also where we most frequently see deer and where I hit one once. They come down from the safety of the woods and cross the road to get to the creek below. This summer we kept seeing a small speckled fawn wavering by the edge of the road and we wondered where its mother was, and another summer we saw big awkward families of wild turkeys scrambling hysterically through the underbrush.

The road moves down gently toward the state highway, where the road ends and the creek meets the river. The last gentle bends of the creek are deep and wide and harbor herons and sometimes ducks, and there's an amazing sycamore near the bank that's shrouded in a garland of bright-red ivy leaves long before fall color arrives anywhere else.

Reaching the highway feels like victory: the end of the road! I made it! But the only way back is to turn around and face that hill again. The slope is gentler from this side, but who has any energy left to climb it? On my own, it feels impossible--but with company, it's just another walk.