Thursday, February 03, 2011

Old Haunts



It's a quiet and somewhat somber spot right now.

This pond along Center Valley Road remains on winter snooze control. 

A month from now, the place will be crawling with abundant life and constant chatter of geese and duck families.

I stopped the car yesterday to grab a quick shot of this and the creature pictured below. 

He/she was perched in a big cottonwood surveying the pond and its surrounding pasture.

Not much potential at this spot, but it's calving time not too far away, and the Woods tell me the eagles love to hang around, waiting for their helpings of after birth.

I took Mother for a drive yesterday along this and other back roads. 

Those would include Baldy, where the build-up of homes from the good ol' days has displaced the familiarity of old-time farm fields and small-time farms.

We cut over on Upland Drive.  Mother remembered someone we knew who lived there.  That would be the Wooden's, all members of our 4-H group and church.

We noted Neal Cochran's farm on Gooby Road, where Mother wondered out loud  if all those fruit trees in the hillside field were producing.  I told her I thought they were.

I've never forgotten when Neal, who used to castrate our calves, for the Rocky Mountain oysters, told me to bring my bucket over one summer to pick cherries. 

They were huge and red and juicy and delicious.  I filled the bucket in no time.

We then drove up to Mountain View Road, which was covered with a sheet of old, dusty ice.  Not enough sun or warmth in there for any significant melt.

We drove by Lloyd and Betty Robinson's old farm and noted the place next door, which Mother and Harold considered buying for a time.

Lloyd was a horse-shoer and fireman, while Betty was a favorite teacher to hundreds of students. 

I don't think Mother was fully aware---a bit further on our afternoon journey--  that we were driving on a paved road through our old cow pastures while crossing over from Mountain View Road to Woodland Drive.

It hardly looks the same with those big, bland-looking "affordable" houses now occupying the hillside where Harold kept his Hereford cows in the summer time and where the Harneys milked their Holsteins even before that.

At least, the trees I transplanted when Bill and I were first married and living in the Upper Tibbs Ranch rental house are still standing.  They have grown impressively.

Mother did comment, however, about the field below and across the road---once our hayfield, now belonging to Lighthouse, Inc. 

We agreed that they haven't done much or maybe even have even done less to improve Upper Woodland Drive. 

It was a bumpy stretch, driving through "Book Land," to say the least.

Again, house density seemed to be the rule as we drove on up the "old Schweitzer Road" and crossed the creek which Mother depicted in one of her pen and ink sketches.

The Schweitzer parking lot on the old Paulet place was nearly full; it had to be a great but cold day of sunny skiing at Schweitzer.

While bouncing along on ice-ridden, pot-holed North North Boyer, we met our family friend Keith Glazier who was out for a walk.

Keith hauled my sister Laurie's horse Richie to the Arabian Nationals in Albuquerque back in 1987.   

She and Richie won a Top Ten in Show Hack.  Mother and I flew down and watched. 

It was a pretty neat happening, to say the least.

The Glaziers were in to horses, so we spent a lot of time visiting with them over the years.  It had been a while, however, since we'd seen Keith.

Moving on, we turned on West Selle Road where, over the winter,  Leonard Wood has been doing some clearing on a large tract of Sand Creek-bottom land.

That would be just south of the wonderful, immaculate Ayrshire Dairy Thad Hunt once ran when I was a kid.  

Thad and his adorable British wife Alice eventually moved across the highway where he raised Appaloosas.

Nowadays, the folks who own Miller's Country Store back on Baldy Road live there. 

We made a stop here at the Lovestead where Mother enjoyed looking at the horses.  Brooke and Todd, the grandpuppies,  joined us for the rest of the trip.

Both Mother and I enjoyed the sights and the reminiscing.

The land may change in appearance over the years, but fortunately, the stories associated with those spots and back roads remain etched in our memories for a long, long time.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I truly enjoyed your presentation at the Friends of the Library program today!

MLove said...

Thank you. It was nice meeting you.

Hope to see you again and that Bill joins the fly tying group.