Stuck in the Woods

My husband and I both grew up in suburban neighborhoods.  Inconspicuous houses on half-acre lots lined our cul-de-sacs that were clustered together in walkable neighborhoods, anchored by an elementary school and community pool.  We had sidewalks and curbs and circles at the end where kids would gather on bikes and big wheels to meet the ice cream man.  It was a good life.

So why are we here, in the woods, on a bumpy gravel road where you have to swerve to avoid crashing head-on into a pickup going 50 down the middle of the road? They can’t paint center lines on gravel.  There is no city water, no cable tv, no DSL.  Kids learn to ride bikes on dirt and there is no ice cream man.  Hell, there isn’t even trash service.  We have to load our trash up every Saturday and take it to the elementary school where the Ruritan Club has dumpsters – a service they created to stop people from just dumping their trash in the woods.

It was a romantic idea — land, trees, pastures — a simpler life.  Let me tell you, there is nothing simple about it, and we were completely unprepared.  We have been here for more than twelve years now, and we are still completely unprepared.

It took us about five years to learn how to manage the millions of leaves that blanket our property each fall.  I am not exaggerating when I say millions. It might be billions. We are surrounded by 80-year-old oaks (white, red, black, you name it).  Some of the leaves are as large as my face.  There is not a season that something isn’t falling off these trees.  In the winter, it is dead branches that fall.  In the spring, it is pollen – the long stringy green stuff that turns brown and clumps into matted nests.  In the summer, you’ll get strange little black things that I’ve yet to identify, and then in August the acorns start to drop, threatening concussions for anyone not wearing a helmet.  In the early fall, big green branches are ripped off by the winds from hurricanes off the coast.  And, in October through December, the leaves fall.

They are gorgeous at first – crimson and gold and copper in color.  They are beautiful on the trees and even when they fall.  We start blowing them (raking is useless).  We focus on the deck and the tiny area surrounding the house.  To blow it all takes about three hours.  Two days later, you’d never know it had ever been blown.  We repeat this sisyphean task until the first bad storm when we give up and let the winds take over until March.  Each year, we head back out for a few weeks until the blower dies or our backs go out and we realize it is time to call the guys.

That is what we end up doing in most situations.  We call some guys who grew up on dirt roads (here or in Mexico) and know better how to tame this wild land.  But first we need to try to do what we think we learned the last time.  We try, but we always seem to end up getting deeper into trouble.

That is where we are now — deep in the woods in trouble.

It started last winter when we got two unprecedented snowstorms.  Two feet were followed soon after by another three.  We got through it with our industrial snow blower and the help from some guys we found to shovel off our roof before it collapsed.  We got through it, but the snow blower was a little worse for the wear.

When the snow melted, we forgot about that blower because we were focused on the leaf blower instead.  It and the tractor needed tune-ups so we called some guys to help with blowing and mowing until they were out of the shop.  We forgot all about the snow blower until we got 12 inches this winter and it stopped blowing snow after about five minutes.  We called a neighbor who plowed us out a few days later.  Great guy.

With reports of another storm coming, I set out to reposition our tractor so we could use its bucket to push the snow.  That’s all the neighbor had done.  Surely we could manage that.  We had the equipment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to go out until too late.  The freezing rain started while I was still struggling to back the tractor out of the mucky leaves it was parked in.

What the hell was my husband thinking parking it off the gravel?  Wait, did I move it here?  Oh yeah, I didn’t like seeing it in front of the house so I moved it back here, out of sight.  My suburban instincts had screwed me again.

I could feel the tractor slipping on the new layer of ice, so I decided to drive it forward, making a loop through the woods and back onto the driveway.  It seemed like a good plan at the time.  Not surprisingly, I got stuck.  Only now, I was deeper in the woods and the freezing rain was driving down fast.   I abandoned the tractor and headed for shelter where I told my husband the bad news.

He was not surprised.  He didn’t even seem annoyed.  I felt helpless.  I wasn’t even sure whom we’d eventually call to help get it out come the thaw.   I wouldn’t want my neighbor to know how ridiculous we really were.  Fortunately, we didn’t get much snow and it soon melted, so the tractor probably wouldn’t be needed until spring.

But, this morning was trash day.  I was hauling out bins of recycling while my husband pulled the pickup around to the garage.  He came back on foot.  Not a good sign.

He explained that there was a tree down across part of the driveway, so he had to back into the woods to turn around and come the other way.  The ground was like a sponge from the thaw, so the two-wheel-drive Ford Ranger didn’t stand a chance.  We can’t use the tractor to pull it out because it is stuck about a quarter-mile from where the truck is currently sinking into deeper into the mud.

I wasn’t surprised.  I wasn’t even annoyed.   But I wondered where that ice cream man was now that we really needed him.