Saturday, October 9, 2010

RED - YELLOW - GREEN -----

I have already said much about the colors in Maine and the changing seasons. But yesterday I was driving from Standish to Kennebunk via Route 35, a rural route through farm lands and very small villages - really just corners - with a church, a corner store; an elementary school, a day care, a town hall, a small square building with "library" on a sign out front. A junky front yard belonging to some frugal Mainer who can't resist yard sale bargains even though he has not immediate use for it. Very definitely Maine scenery.

The road is "curvaceous" and has ups and downs in various unpredictable sequences. I saw more than one horse farm. One said "breeding farm" another said "quarter horses" and yet another said "boarding farm." I was upset at the "quarter horse" farm because it was very wet and the fenced area looked to small for the two horses that were standing in it. Behind the farm there was a very nice field, and to one side there was a white fenced area that had two horses grazing. I felt sad for the two horses standing in the swampy area.

As I drove on I saw a nice farm with wire fences which look like the ones at my daughter-in-law's farm. One horse was contentedly grazing inside the fence.
A second was contentedly grazing beside the road, clearly out of bounds. The old "the grass is always greener" syndrome I guess.

I saw a farm with a large field of pumpkins of all sizes resting in the sun amid their limp brown leaves and vines. Charlie Brown's utopia, I thought to myself.
I saw ponds that were full of last week's heavy rain, and little roadside streams that were overflowing their banks. Rain this time of year is good. It assures us of a good hunting season. Wet leaves and soggy ground are quiet to walk in, and the critters leave good trails. Yesterday I heard the gunshots in the Scarborough Marsh as the hunters were out for the ducks and geese that stop over on their way south. I don't like to think of them getting shot. I hear the rest of the flock screaming as they fly away. I am too old and too near my own demise to enjoy the thrill of hunt and kill.

Well, as I drove at my leisure enjoying all the scenery and thinking how much land there is in Maine, and a lot of it is still undeveloped. There are still huge wooded areas and ponds that are not polluted. I glanced in the mirror. My goodness, there were a lot of cars behind me enjoying the day too....or maybe they were not. Maybe I was keeping them from their appointed rounds and they were cursing that "d----- old woman in the minivan" for going 25 mph on a road that clearly could handle 45, although the signs say 35 - but were those the speed signs or the route signs? I stepped up the speed to the legal limit and hope they were enjoying the scenery as I was. I gave them plenty of opportunity - it's their fault if they didn't take advantage of it.

Enjoy the season. It's sometimes all too short. jem

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