To the Corner and Back: The Place I Call Home
Ashley Winseck
My corner of the world is a stretch of two roads that intersect sharply as Kellogg Road and Boardman Street collide at the base of an unnamed mountain. The roads have cut the land at the base into geometric shapes which have been cultivated into fields of grass and long rows of corn that I used to get lost in for hours. These fields that surround the two roads are cut off by woods, which meet a river, which borders the main road from which traffic can be heard but not seen. On the other side of the main road, more open fields and winding roads eventually lead to the base of Mt. Everett and the line of small mountains that neighbor it. The view on the other side is of New York, or Connecticut, or more of Massachusetts, depending on which direction you face. But you can not see all that from my corner at Boardman and Kellogg. All you can see is the mountain behind you, the fields in front of you, the tree line where they end, and the solid, blue mountains that rise in the distance to meet the sky.
The roads are owned by the town, the fields on both sides, by a farmer down the road and out of sight. But these fields at this corner are part of a view that touches a place in my heart. The farmers may own the land, but the landscape itself, well; I like to think it belongs to me. It has been the only constant in many years of change. I have passed those fields riding a bike, driving my first cars, with different friends. As I grew up learning life’s lessons, the only thing that stayed the same, was the corner, their fields, and my love for all of it. Every spring the grassy stretch before the corn rows would turn green again, growing ever taller as the earth warmed up. Every summer the corn grew steadily; first appearing as tiny green spouts that I could have overtaken in a moment; eventually reaching to the height of my knees, letting me know that summer was in full swing. By summer’s end the corn was always taller than I was; a sign that the first day of school was right around the corner.
After summer, when the leaves changed, the trees around the field turned bright orange, and red and gold and when I walked to the corner it seemed as if the world was glowing. Winter blessed the fields with snow and when I had used up every square inch of snow in my own yard to sled and build snow men and snow forts, I would go down to the field, as if it were my backyard, as if the snow was there for me alone to enjoy. When the snow melted I would endure the few long months of New England’s mud season, that time before spring when the snow ceases to fall and the earth can’t seem to produce anything green. Eventually, spring would come. Spring always came, the grass always turned green, and I began to tell time by the height of the corn. And always in the distance, the mountains watching over me and my life on Boardman and Kellogg.
A round trip to the corner and back is roughly half a mile, part of which is open road running along the first field of tall, itchy grassy nothingness. Standing on this part of Boardman Street lends a view of so many different worlds all meshed into one, and I am a part of it. If I turn my back on this view and walk north toward my driveway, the view is obscured slightly by trees and a few other homes. On both sides of the street the trees rise up meeting tree top to tree top over head, blocking out the sky, creating a leafy tunnel that filters sunlight down to my skin. And I am home.
****
I am nine years old, my sister, seven. We are lost, but we are not scared. We are not worried, we are laughing. Beneath our feet the dirt is soft and damp and our foot prints follow us as we walk. Above us, the corn stalks block the sun, the blue sky peeks through, and from somewhere down the road, my mother’s whistle signals that it is time to go home. For what seems like hours, maybe even days, we walk the length of a single row knowing that we will eventually meet the road. The leaves of corn stalks scratch at our bare legs, and we stop constantly to itch. When we finally reach the road, we follow it to the corner and hear the whistle again; a third whistle means we’re in trouble, so we begin to run. My mother does a thorough tick check, lecturing us about deer ticks, lyme disease, the usual. But we don’t care because our minds are still lost in the corn field.
As children though we appreciate nature for what it is, naturally. We do not cloud our minds with worries of ticks or rabies, spider bites, sun damage. We are in it for the adventure, the pure thrill of the unknown, taking advantage of the open fields and the open sky and everything it has to offer the imagination. Only as we grow older do forces of nature become clear. Back roads that lazily wind along a river, skirting around trees and over hills suddenly become our enemies when a car traveling just a little too fast meets an unforgiving tree with devastating consequences. Something about growing up brings reality so quickly and unexpectedly into out lives, it seems as if our imaginations are thrown abruptly out that car window as it smashes into the tree called reality and we open our eyes to realize that this is called life. When you look at it that way I think we’d all rather be children again, lost in the corn, where the only thing to be sure of is the sky above us. Maybe that’s why the corner always meant so much to me, no matter how fast reality came at me, I could still always go to the corner and be a child again. That was my personal savior; the view of the world from the corner was how I survived, and still survive growing up.
****
I am thirteen years old. My mother drives the mini van out of the tree line on Kellogg Road and into the open fields, following it to the corner. I sit in the back seat with my sister, arguing over nothing. My aunt sits in the front seat, gazing in awe at the view. As the mountain in front of us looms higher as we move closer she signs and says, “Just seeing these mountains makes me feel good.” My sister and I laughed a little; it seemed like such an absurd statement. How can the mountains make you feel good? A lifetime of suburban sidewalks and views of a city skyline in Houston have left my aunt deprived of places like my corner. While I spent most of my years thinking this corner was mine, my home, my view, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Countless people must have appreciated this place, this little valley between two mountain ranges, this corner of the world.
But how many eyes could possibly take in this view? How many people would find themselves at an intersection so remote the town opted to use a yield sign rather than a stop sign? Stopping is, for the most part unnecessary, for two reasons: one, because only on occasion are there two cars approaching the intersection at the same time, and two, because the roads run along with fields, with unobstructed views, so that any approaching vehicle can be spotted long before collision. And so, most days, I can make the 90 degree left hand turn without so much as slowing down.
So how many people have been to this intersection? The answer is hundreds, thousands maybe. Running parallel to Kellogg Road for almost its entire length is the Appalachian Trail. A few posts and a single tree bare the white rectangular blazes that keep hikers on their course. Who can say exactly how many feet have walked that part of the trail? No doubt locals tired of hiking to the peaks of Mt. Everett and Monument and Greylock have tried out the Trail. Their cars are often seen lining the field under the large, lonely tree, as if its branches could offer some protection that the open fields could not. Of course, the serious hikers have crossed the intersection passing through on their journey south to north or north to south, depending on the time of year. They have sat in the shade of the tree near the corner, taking in the mountains from a distance, perhaps glad to finally be on a paved road, or taking one last moment to stand on flat ground before traversing the steep hill which Boardman Street borders.
It is a strange feeling, to realize that your secret corner of the world is really not secret at all. That it is, to some extent, a tourist attraction; or maybe a place so common it really isn’t special at all. But I refuse to believe that. Maybe I would be forced to share this place with others, after all it was something beyond my control, by no one could feel about this corner the way I felt, no one could be a part of that world they way I could.
****
I am eighteen years old. My father is shaking me awake sometime after midnight. There’s a meteor shower said to begin around 3 a.m. and my parents and I plan to see it. So we climb into the cab of the truck, and my father drives down to the corner. He pauses at the turn, as if he can’t decide from which field we should view the sky. After pulling over, my mother and I lay out blankets over the tall grass. The moon is astonishingly bright enough to see through the dark, as if our eyes never had to adjust, as if we were made to live in the dark. It is eerily quiet. Long after the crickets and frogs have ended their nightly conversations, long after the coyotes nighttime howls and cries have stopped, it seemed like a time when the world was not really alive.
Occasionally, I find myself jumping at the sound of rustling grass as some creature runs past us, a reminder that the field we lay in is just as alive as we are. My father tells me not to worry, just be still, be quiet. And that’s what we do. We lay for hours on our makeshift beds, with pillows under our heads and the tall grass surrounding us, walling us in on all sides. The only sign of civilization aside from ourselves is my father’s truck parked on the corner, proof that we came from somewhere.
That night it was as if we had driven a hundred miles to a corner we didn’t know. This wasn’t the same corner I had visited all my life. I couldn’t see the mountains anymore. Their color blended in to the color of night, as if they were never there to begin with, and I had imagined them all these years. The longer we stayed in the middle of that field the more out of place I felt, and I knew then that I had never really experienced this corner. I had grown up loving it for what I could see. I could walk through it at leisure, take in the view, I could feel moved by it, but until that night I had never lived in it. We were only a few yards from the field’s edge, from paved road, from home, and yet there we were in the middle of a different world, at 3 a.m., waiting for the stars to fall.
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