rural life – Page 42 – Roadkill Crossing

When glory bursts through

By Bruce Stambaugh

From our rented efficiency apartment in our favorite Ohio retreat, Lakeside Chautauqua, the day seemed gloomy, even overcast. Then I stepped outside into the predawn elements.

High, wispy cirrus clouds tickled the waning half moon. The previous evening’s rainstorms birthed refreshing morning coolness. At first, the stillness surprised me. It shouldn’t have.

The sleepy town was even sleepier on this Sunday morning. On the way to the lakefront, I broke through the waif of freshly made doughnuts at The Patio, the village’s popular eatery, without temptation.

Northern glow.

Hazy half moon.

Breaking through.

Lakeside at dawn.

Sun-kissed cottages.

When I reached the dock, I was stunned. Not a soul could be seen or heard. The day’s early morning dim light glowed along with the Victorian lampposts. Dimpled rivulets, like a sea of golf balls, pockmarked the calm Lake Erie.

Typically this alluring pier is packed with folks, even at sunrise. Walkers, joggers, fisherman share the space. Not today. I had the place to myself. I was both thrilled and awed in the silent twilight.

A pinkish halo hovered over Kelley’s Island five miles across the water. However, a peek to the east dampened my hopes for a sterling sunrise. Still I hoped.

I retreated to the pier’s entrance, mentally adjusting for a morning stroll around the resort town’s parameters. I glanced east again and found paradise. The sun’s bright beauty overrode the clouded horizon.

All glory was bursting through. I chose to exercise my senses rather than my legs. The Sunday morning service was about to begin, and I wanted to participate.

I walked along the rocky reinforced shore toward the call to worship. Using my eyes, ears, heart, soul, and camera, I recorded as much of the sacred ceremony as I could.

Baltimore Orioles picked up the chorus with the robins and purple martins. A lone common nighthawk buzzed overhead, skimming insects attempting to attack the unfolding beauty.

Fish played, jumped, and fed in the shallows near shore, rippling the calm waters that reflected the brightening sky. First pink and red, then orange and yellow added to the heavenly pallet.

Yellow, purple, and white irises dotted with last night’s raindrops joined the congregation. Stone upon stone sculptures added to the outdoor ambiance.

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Surrounded by reflected brilliance, a family of Canada geese glided through the still waters without their usual commotion. Unaware of my presence, a pair of young raccoons cooed as they foraged in the oversized rocks for anything edible.

Lakeside daisies, held harmless by earlier cooler days, stood at attention during the offertory. As if rehearsed, the geese honked while the Nighthawk buzzed, forming an inexplicable choir. The sun just smiled its approval.

The shoreline trees expressed their worshipful appreciation, too. The willows gracefully bowed as the geese floated by, while the oaks and ash remained tall, strong and attentive.

Soon other humans were drawn to the splendor. A visiting woman ran past me and asked if lived here. I wish. Even if I did, I still couldn’t begin to own the natural grandeur.

Protect it, preserve it, embrace it, praise it. Yes. Claim it as my own. Never.

This may sound funny, but it’s true. Without a sound, the sky spoke reassuring words, words that calmed and healed and inspired.

The sermon’s message was clear. No earthly power or politician or calamity or chaos could overcome this evolving creation of the Creator.

In that, I was most confident and filled to overflowing. At the benediction, the sun wholly overtook the darkness, and indeed, it was good.

Young Haymakers

making hay, Ohio's Amish Country — Young haymakers.

Tradition says Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer in U.S. culture. In Ohio’s Amish country, seasons are often determined by harvests. The year’s first cutting of hay marks the summer harvest season in rural America.

Friends, neighbors, and family members of all ages pitch in to help make the hay. These youngsters gathered hay bales and held the reins to the horses pulling the hay wagon while the adults did the milking. Giving youth such responsibility teaches work skills and reinforces the already strong work ethic of the Amish.

“Young Haymakers” is my Photo of the Week.

Making meaningful memories

By Bruce Stambaugh

Whether we realize it or not, we make memories every day.

Memories don’t have to be from times long past. Often they are the moments at hand that we cherish the most. The older I get, the more emotive I am about the everyday happenings in my life.

Some memories come from yesterday. Others bubble up from the yesterdays of long, long ago. Some are innocent, innocuous ditties while others are serious, life-awakening treasures.

The odd thing about memories is how they so often just pop up at the strangest times and places. It’s why we need to be mindful of our constant memory making.

A spark down deep spontaneously ignites and I’m hiking a switchback alpine trail inhaling thin, clear mountain air. Another moment I’m in the delivery room of the local hospital watching my lovely wife deliver our second child. Soon our family doctor holds our newborn in front of us, exclaiming, “She’s a boy!”

In another flash, I’m a child myself, belly flopping on my Flexible Flyer through heavy, wet snow, shouts of glee echoing off the blanketed hillsides. I still have that magic sled.

I remember our daughter, only two at the time, ordering a male guest who tried to leave to sit back down. Her little tea party wasn’t ready to end. The man laughed and complied.

I remember racing to beat the rapidly rising tide to the beach in a shallow bay on Cape Cod. I’ve checked the tidal charts ever since. Then there was the warm summer’s evening I climbed the 897 steps in the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital. The walk back down wasn’t nearly as exciting for this 16-year-old.

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Other less joyful memories we wish we could erase of course. But they, too, are indelibly etched in our minds, resurrected at the strangest, most inappropriate times. We cope with thoughts and prayers and tears, always moving forward in our too short lives.

Many of the memories my wife and I have mutually maintained involve travel with family and friends. I hadn’t been to Hocking Hills State Park since I was a teenager. I enjoyed a recent trip with friends as much as I did the one 50 years ago with family.

We strolled trails, discovered waterfalls, explored caves, and enjoyed every color of green imaginable. We wandered forests of towering trees with unfolding canopies and floors of thousands of feathery ferns.

The best memories don’t have to come from exotic, far away places either. They can be pretty close to home. And, too, some settings are made to be memorable.

Ideally, wedding ceremonies and the ensuing reception are memory machines. This celebration was especially so. We witnessed the wedding of our Amish neighbor’s daughter. It’s always an honor to be guests at such occasions.

We loved the focus on family and personal commitment. It was a happy yet solemn occasion. The combination of the simplicity and the significance of the marriage sealed the moment into my mind. There was no flowing wedding gown, no tuxedos, no flowery bouquets, only serious contemplation.

At the reception in the barn, the buzz of the lively conversations further seasoned the already scrumptious food passed up and down long, pleasantly decorated tables. It truly was a life celebration worth remembering.

Memories are potent reminders of life’s sweeping landscapes. What endearing memories will we make today that will be worthy of future recollecting?

Ash Cave, Logan OH — Ash Cave, Hocking Hills State Park, Logan, OH.

The Chimney Farm

Amish farmstead, furrowed field — The Chimney Farm.

I love to shoot this farm, especially when the setting sun brightens the buildings. On this spring evening, cumulus clouds billowed in the background, adding depth to the photo. I have pictures of this farm in all seasons. But this is the first with the field plowed. However, week-long rains softened the usually firm furrows.

As it turned out, the plowed field became the foreground for the unintended main subject. The family of chimneys on the various farmstead buildings carry the viewer’s eye left to right, a visual tour of this iconic Amish farm.

“The Chimney Farm” is my Photo of the Week.

May is for the birds

By Bruce Stambaugh

May is for the birds. That’s good news for those of us who live in northern Ohio.

Year in and year out, May tends to be a very pleasant month here. The days grow longer and warmer.

Garden flowers splash welcomed colors against neatly trimmed, emerald lawns. Rainbows of wildflowers carpet forest floors, hiding the decaying leaf litter for six months. Mushrooms and May apples join them.

But what broadens the smiles in many folks from ages four to 94 are the returning birds. Not that people have been disappointed with the aviary species that frequented their backyard feeders in the dormant months.

The colorful songbirds, all decked out in their mating wardrobes, radiate new life into their human audiences. I’m certain the birds are unaware.

You don’t even have to be a serious birder to know that feeling. When the first Baltimore Oriole flashes its black and orange and whistles its distinctive call, it’s officially May.

Out come the store-bought and homemade feeders full of grape jelly. Stand back and let the gorging begin.

This year the birds seemed simply to fall out of the sky. Person after person reported the first of the year Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole, and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

It’s amazing how those little hummers remember where the previous year’s feeders hung. If they beat you to the punch, they’re hovering outside your kitchen window waiting for lunch or supper, depending on when their flight landed in your yard.

This year I beat them to it. I had the feeder cleaned and filled with fresh sugar water long before April melded into May. But the birds got the last laugh. The first bird on the hummingbird feeder was a male Baltimore Oriole. Yes, they like a sweet sip now and then, too.

So, out went the oriole feeder. I hardly had stepped away when a male Baltimore Oriole swooped in for his feast. A male Orchard Oriole, a bird that I had never seen feed at the grape jelly station before, soon followed.

Friends near and far reported orioles galore. Their joy mimicked that of the infectious calls of the birds themselves.

male rose-breasted grosbeak — Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Then came another wave of exuberance. Folks from all around called, emailed, and showed me photos of a bird they had seldom had at their feeders before. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks held their own fallout party. Some people reported eight or 10 at a time feeding. Not only are these handsome birds fun to watch, but their song also matches their beauty.

Of course, a few rare birds pass through on their way further north for the summer. American White Pelicans and stately Black-necked Stilts made appearances to the area.

But this time of year, it’s the colorful warblers that serious birders covet. Scores of birders from around the world converge on the Lake Erie shoreline to watch and listen for this annual splendor. They are seldom disappointed.

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The Biggest Week in American Birding is held annually from early to mid-May in northwest Ohio’s Magee Marsh Wildlife Area. Scores of migrating birds, warblers, shorebirds, and birds of prey among them, rest and forage in the adjoining marshes, wetlands, and woodlots before heading over the lake.

Even if you can’t make it there, the birds may still come to you. The key is to be on the watch.

You never know what bright and cheery surprise may come your way in May. But look quick, because just like May, some of them might be gone in a vivid flash.

Holsteins

From my perspective, there is nothing particularly dynamic or unusual about this photo. As soon as I saw this scene, I knew I had to capture it. Driving back roads in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the contrasting, vibrant colors jumped out at me.

As soon as I exited my vehicle, the cows stopped their grazing and stood posed for the photo op as if they had done this several times before. They might have. Because right after I snapped this photograph, most of the Holsteins charged the fence to scare off the paparazzi. I obliged them.

“Holsteins” is my Photo of the Week.

Same walk, new results

Ohio's Amish country, Holmes Co. OH. — In my “hood.”

By Bruce Stambaugh

I love to walk outdoors. Treadmills don’t do it for me.

I guess I’m a multi-sensory walker. I need to exercise my listening, my observing, my sensing, my thinking as well as my muscles and my entire bony being.

Walking is an easy sport unless you’re a fair-weather walker. That’s me. I don’t do well in wet, windy, cold conditions.

My pickiness has its consequences, however. My body complains in multiple ways. My achy bones cry out in rebellion. My hamstrings tighten in protest. My soft tissue succumbs to gravity.

Other symptoms sneak up on you, tricking you into sullenness. Blood pressure is one of those conspirators.

All my life people would offer to buy my low blood pressure scores. I never fully appreciated the physicality of high blood pressure or the corrective medicinal ramifications. I do now.

Age apparently has caught up with me. At a routine check-up, my blood pressure was the highest it had ever been. Thinking it an anomaly, the nurse took it again. It went even higher.

I drove straight to the pharmacy and purchased a new digital wrist blood pressure cuff. My old manual one with the stethoscope had given up the ghost. I didn’t want to join it, so I began daily recordings of my blood pressure and pulse.

My good doctor tweaked my medication according to those results and my body’s physical reactions. I wasn’t ready for what followed. I hated the melancholy, lackadaisical feelings, the fuzziness and body fatigue, though I had done little physically.

I had a new appreciation for those with the same condition. I longed to return to my daily walks, but the weather was as uncooperative as my new pills. I brooded beneath the seemingly perpetual steel gray Ohio sky.

Then, a week after the last snow, spring broke through. Daffodils sprang back. Spring beauties and phlox carpeted woodlots and pastures. The season’s first tulip brightened our yard. It was time to walk again.

The warmth alone drew me outside. I was in heaven again once I got past the roadside dead deer decaying in a woodlot south of our house. When I turned onto the little township road, I hit my stride.

I crested the first knob, and my favorite valley opened before me. The gently undulating and curving road reflected the morning sun. The road resembled a silver ribbon as it ran through the vale beyond the comely farms and up and over the eastern hill that separates one watershed from the other.

red-bellied woodpecker — Male Red-bellied Woodpecker.

The birds rejoiced with me. A dozen species regaled and entertained me with song and their territorial acrobatics. I rejoiced in the many varieties of the spring birds that had returned to mingle with the year-round residents.

At the halfway mark, the stream gurgled its own refreshing tune, too, though it hadn’t rained for days. The artesian well ran strong into the roadside trough. The willow tree teased yellow with its drooping canopy of leafy buds.

When I reached the little rise at the first farm, a familiar fragrance freshened the morning air. An invigorating mix of soap and cotton wafted all the way to the road from a recently hung line of laundry.

A few more steps and purple martins greeted me with salient salutations and arching flyovers. In contrast, the one-room Amish school stood silent, scholars already having completed another year of studies.

I felt incredible, transformed. My blood pressure was thankful, too.

valley, Ohio's Amish country — Evening in my favorite valley.

Where everybody knows your name

poorly addressed letter — The way it began.

By Bruce Stambaugh

There are some definite benefits to living the rural life. The perks will make your life rich, but you won’t necessarily become wealthy.

I recently had a week’s worth of devotions published in a church periodical, Rejoice!. I received an honorarium for my efforts, but that wasn’t the real motivator. I just enjoyed sharing personal and pertinent stories.

What happened after the devotions published became the real reward. A few folks who know me expressed their appreciation for my daily commentaries. An elderly man from Bern, Indiana even sent a nice handwritten note.

He thanked me for my writing and then spent the rest of the letter telling me about his car dealership, now in its fifth generation. That was fun. But it was amazing I received the letter at all.

mail carrier, U.S. mail — The mail cometh.

The kind man simply mailed the envelope with only my full name and Millersburg, Ohio written on the front. No street address. No zip code. And I got it.

The truth is, I wasn’t surprised at all that the letter arrived in our mailbox. It’s not that I’m famous. The fact that my wife and I happen to be the only Stambaughs in the county had to help. However, this was the United States Postal Service, a federal government institution that has had its share of lumps and negative publicity.

That reputation of bigness doesn’t necessarily hold true in Holmes County, Ohio. This isn’t the first time we’ve received a skimpily addressed letter.

Once we had a card from a friend with our name, town and zip on the envelope accompanied by a note scribbled on the envelope that said, “The same road as the restaurant.” When you don’t know the road number, improvise. It worked.

It gets better. Years ago when we lived in the southwest section of the county my ornery older brother sent a letter addressed with only the first names of my wife and me and 44637. That’s the zip code for Killbuck, Ohio. Once again, we got it. My brother couldn’t believe it.

rural life, Ohio's Amish country — Rural defined.

It was a perk of personally knowing the postmaster. A lot of people in the area could say that. In fact, when we moved east to our current location our mail was forwarded far beyond the required time. It stopped the day Bob House retired as Killbuck postmaster.

Bob went above and beyond the call of duty. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to do so. He exemplified the personal consideration and dedication of many folks we have met over our lifetime in this marvelous rural county.

Folks welcomed us into the Amish culture, too, when we relocated to the eastern end of the county. Neighbors invited us to picnics and Amish weddings.

We especially appreciated the invitations to Amish church services. Though we didn’t understand most of what was said, we got the message in the spirit of being treated with kindness and respect.

As educators in the local public schools, my wife and I were shown the highest regard of reverence for our responsibilities with the children of Amish and English alike. Families invited us for meals and visits. We felt more than welcome in both East Holmes and West Holmes.

It’s not always easy living in a county with a population that is less than that of a small city. But as you can see, there are distinct advantages to residing in a locale where everybody knows your name, including the mail carrier.

Helping Grandpa

Amish farmers — Helping Grandpa. © Bruce Stambaugh 2016

Cute as it looks, this photo shows much more than a grandson riding along as his grandfather encourages a team of workhorses across a farm field. This exemplifies the hands-on part of an Amish education. Children learn at a young age how the work gets done, whether on a farm or in a shop or the house. It is practical, productive learning at its finest.

“Helping Grandpa” is my Photo of the Week.

Sunset Glory

The sunsets just keep getting better and better. Or possibly it’s the string of perpetually gray Ohio days that make the infrequent sunset all the more glorious. Either way, I greatly appreciate the beauty of the evening sky and the radiance that bids the day farewell.

“Sunset Glory” is my Photo of the Week.