Wednesday July 7th
Our road was slurry coated yesterday, organized by our next-door neighbor and paid for by the residents. This is a maintenance measure to keep the road in good repair. We are outside the jurisdiction of the County and are responsible for all of its care. The infrastructure project, as John calls it, meant a twenty-four-hour closure, no cars, no people, no in and out. Many of us drove our cars down to the main road and assumed it would be easy to walk down to the road and home again. I walk our road often as exercise. It has a steep hill and takes about forty or fifty minutes depending on who you have to stop and chat with, but I have never walked its edges because they face the stream on one side or the mountain on the other. To see if I could do it with a bag of groceries on my arm, I parked the car on the Maricopa Highway and eased myself onto the verge. By the time I had climbed under three volunteer pepper trees with low wide branches spreading onto the ground, slipped on piles of rocks that looked stable but were not, realized that a walking stick might help, it was too late. I finally got home covered in debris and deciding that my trip to the nursery and the pool tomorrow were cancelled.
Late in the day, the new road drying in the sun, I saw neighbors walking their dogs still forbidden. I made a promised visit to a nearby friend and neighbor, walking carefully on the stony verge between our homes. They are leaving for a month, and I am watering and eating from their vegetable garden. A tour of the area was necessary.
Up very early this morning I took a walk to look at the road and reclaim my car parked on the Highway. Only one pair of footprints were visible on the new and clean black road, a dusty pair of feet had left our neighbors house and headed up the road towards us. You didn’t have to be a detective to see someone had left their dusty driveway and walked onto the pristine road in dirty shoes and marched right down the middle of the sparkling new road imprinted forever in the wet tar.
