Weather: It snowed last Thursday. About 5" lay evenly on the ground. Since then, afternoon temperatures have melted some, and refrozen it at night. The surface in the graveled drive is now dimpled.
A crust has formed over the top. On the ramp that leads to the house, the snow continues to melt from below, leaving an thin icy overhang.
Last snow: 1/16. Week’s low: 9 degrees F. Week’s high: 50 degrees F in the shade.
What’s green: Everything is under snow.
Tasks: When afternoon temperatures don’t rise to the mid-40s, the only people who work outside are those who must.
Animal sightings: Scattered footprints in the snow around the Siberian pea.
Weekly update: When I was a kid in the 1950s, my father used to complain about road hogs. This was before the interstates, and all the primary roads were two lanes. There was some cut and fill done in my part of Michigan, but roads still followed the hills and curves of the land.
A road hog was someone who drove with two wheels over the center line and forced oncoming traffic to go onto the shoulders. At least in Michigan, there were shoulders.
I met a subspecies when I lived near Abilene, Texas. There people had no sense of lane in supermarkets. No matter how wide or how narrow the aisle, they pushed their carts down the center. I thought then the problem was people had not grown up with any sense of partitioned space. After all, the land and the sky were flat and vast.
More recently I’ve found a more rational reason for hugging the center. In this area, many of the roads are just wide enough for two cars to pass. When the weeds grow up, even I tend to move to the center. At this time of the year, the edges of the pavement are fraying, and one moves inland to avoid sharp drops.
However, there is an etiquette for country roads, common here, in Texas, and in Michigan. When one sees someone coming one either moves to the right, or pulls over and stops until the other car passes. Drivers then exchange waves to acknowledge each other.
Another subspecies of the road hog has been invading the area. Many are people who grew up in cities who don’t know the local rules of the road. I suspect some are afraid of scratching their paint. When you meet these people, you’re forced off the road, or, if there’s a ditch at the side, you stop, stare them down, and force them to shift their position. No waves, though other hand gestures are considered.
I recently had one of these creatures at my house. The maintenance man was from Albuquerque. I told him he could bring his truck inside the gate, and park it. He looked at a gravel drive that was more than two cars wide and said he couldn’t get out if stopped there.
It was like, he could steer. You either back up, admittedly maneuvering a right angle through some gates, or you go a bit, stop, back up, re-aim, and repeat. Of course, there was some tall grass in places, but it’s never a problem.
I said people didn’t like to go farther because it got narrow, but he had seen the turn around space. That was all he knew.
He had a tall van with a ladder bracketed to the top.
When he drove in, the top branches of the apricot scrapped the ladder. When he left, he went even closer to the tree. There was a shrub on the other side which might scratch his paint.
When he returned the next day, he drove even closer to the true, and made a joke about pruning my tree.
I didn’t see what happened when he left. I was out at the gate.
When I came back, a large branch had been wrenched from the tree, and left in the drive. He hadn’t bothered to get free when it was caught, and didn’t offer to move it when he left. In fact, he said not a word.
Apparently, the branch got caught in the ladder bracket and it continued to pull until the wood broke.
If I had the limb pruned, the wood cutter would have lopped it off about an inch from the main trunk. This pulled it out of the
The alternative is the man could have left his truck outside the gate. That’s what some maintenance men do.
But then, they are local. They understand the rumors about Española being a dangerous place are exaggerations. They know where it is safe, and not safe. And, of course, they have no problem walking fifty feet.
But a man from Albuquerque who can’t back up and can’t steer, also can’t walk. He can only destroy.
Notes on photographs:
1. Dimpled snow and the apricot branch, 18 January 2020.
2. Torn bark on the apricot branch where it got caught in the ladder brackets of a maintenance van, 6 January 2020.
3. Hole left in apricot trunk by forced removal of a branch, 6 January 2020.
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