On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Submissions have really started rolling in, keep ’em coming!
We now have two submissions with Mr. Frogs, and the second one came in before the post suggesting Mr. Frog week even went up. So I think there’s hope for a Mr. Frog week.
Other ideas that have been suggested: Peace Corps Week and First Timer’s Week.
JanieM
The ten-acre property where I live borders two other parcels: a huge tract of land owned by the school district, and fifteen acres of conservation land belonging to the homeowner’s association up the hill. When we first moved here, most of our property was separated from the neighboring land by an old barbed wire fence.
One fine breezy afternoon in May, sometime in the pre-mobile-phone era, I looked westward out the kitchen window and saw an alarming sight. Beyond the fence to the west were a man, a woman, and some burning brush.
As a firefighter’s daughter, I don’t take fire lightly. My farmhouse and barn were a couple hundred years old and built of wood; if fire came anywhere near the buildings, we were toast.
I ran across the field to ask what was going on. The man informed me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, that they were burning the field for the sake of the haying. I told him I didn’t want my field burned, much less my house and barn, and that they’d better keep the fire off my property.
Indicating the walkie-talkie he was carrying and the small metal container on his back, complete with attached hose, the man said condescendingly that he was a volunteer fireman and he knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t let the fire come onto my field if I didn’t want it there, but his tone suggested that I was an idiot for minding.
I turned away, wondering whether to give him a chance or call 911 sooner rather than later. My decision was made for me by the fact that the fire was onto my land and making quick progress toward the buildings before I was halfway to the house.
I ran back to tell the guy to call for help, only to find him already assuring his buddy at the fire station that he didn’t need any help, he had it all under control.
This time I raced back to the house and called 911. “He does too need help!” was the gist of my message. Luckily, a neighbor had already done the same, and the fire trucks arrived before I could even end the call.
My kids were traumatized, several dozen baby trees were dead, and the fence posts were burned to the ground. The aftermath of this event, while minor, lasted for several years, but eventually the fence was fixed and a few new baby trees were planted.
The field has gone through many changes since then. This set of pictures captures its many seasons and moods.
Late autumn sunset.
Under the snow.
Misty frost. Or frosty mist?
Transition.
Waking up again.
Colors in the wind.
The smell of thaw.
Lines and textures.
Mary G
What a scare you had. Plus the “give me the self-confidence of the most incompetent man” thing. Did he pay for the fence?
And what a glorious series of photos of such a scenic location. You’re lucky to live there and I feel lucky to see it through your eyes.
MazeDancer
Beautiful pictures. Terrifying back story.
Ten Bears
This old wildlands (forest) firefighter would have beat his ass …
SFAW
What a dick that volunteer “fireman” was. Part of me wishes you had re-enacted the end of Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” sketch.
Ixnay
Nice pics, thank you. The Ixnays are in the Bridgton area. Similar field in the back of our place. What part of the state are you in?
J R in WV
Around West Virginia, by far the majority of deliberate arson cases involve VFD members. Your guy was certainly an idiot, perhaps also a firebug. I have never heard of burning a field to improve the haying. So glad you and your neighbors got the real VFD trucks on site before major structures were damaged.
And the pictures are wonderful !!! Thanks for sharing.
arrieve
These pictures are just wonderful. Thank you for brightening my morning.
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV: Out here in CO, burning the water ditches to rid them of plant debris is a yearly rite of spring. I guess it does improve the haying, in a roundabout way.
JanieM
@J R in WV: It’s definitely a thing. You can find all kinds of stuff online about it, e.g. this.
@Ixnay: I live in Readfield. Someday maybe we should have a Maine meet-up. :-)
@Mary G:
That’s where the story gets complicated. He had been hired by a farmer who had been hired by the homeowners association of the houses up the hill. The houses were all new — also built on land from this old farm. We knew they were in the works when we bought the place, and by the time of the fire there were 3 or 4 built.
Those people became neighbors and in some cases friends as the years went by, and my kids played with their kids and could walk back and forth even when they were quite young, because there was no busy road to cross.
But that was later. I think the fire thing was instigated by the middleman, the farmer, asking them if he could use their open land for hay. And he followed the old custom of burning over his hayfields.
The initial reaction of the homeowners who were already there was that it had nothing to do with them. Legally it did (my ex is a lawyer….), since it was their agent who set the field on fire and didn’t control it. There was some back and forth, but no one so much as apologized until another house was built up there by the woman I wrote about in a different post who had campaigned for architectural standards in a neighboring town.
The passion of her advocacy might have been annoying, but she had some integrity. She made her husband and another guy come and fix the fence, and eventually the farmer trudged out to my field with some buckets of baby trees.
The actual “firebug” turned out to be a down-and-out local character who couldn’t even afford a phone. No one really wanted to own up to having anything to do with him, either. I never bothered to try to track him down; the legally responsible neighbors were more in my sights.
That was an era when gay rights was first coming into the news, and gay people were starting to push hard to knock down the walls of the closet. The farmer was a notoriously assholish local anti-gay Christan.
Small towns, don’t you love ’em?
ETA: edited to rearrange for clarity.
BretH
Love the photos, and the stories!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
I’m glad it wasn’t worse but jeez that guy was an idiot! My idiot neighbors decided to burn leaves in their backyard which shares a fence with mine. I was at work and my husband was working in his home office in the basement. He found out the fence was on fire because the kid ACROSS THE STREET, not the ones who set it on fire, came over and pounded on our front door! My husband goes out back just in time to see the firemen chopping a hole in the fence to get in our backyard to work on the fire…they chopped the hole 8 feet from the damn gate they could have used to get in the yard…
This happened one year after the neighbor on the other side of me LOST their house to a house fire that started in their basement…they were lucky to get out with the clothes they stood up in. I can not believe how thoughtless some people are. The neighbor behind me was lucky the wind wasn’t blowing toward his own house…I guess he didn’t care if he burned down mine,
kindness
Who was that man and did he ever apologize?
JanieM
@kindness: See comment #9. But no, he never apologized and I never saw him again. I heard he was pissed off because he had been embarrassed in front of the rest of the volunteer firefighters; he was still convinced he could have taken care of it himself. One of the people who happened to be driving by and stopped to see if he could help called him “a cowboy.” (Insulting cowboys……)
JanieM
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Truer words…… Funny how fences play into these stories.
Madeleine
You brought back “the smell of thaw” with memories of where I knew that smell. Thank you.
Ixnay
@JanieM: meetup is on our radar, but after the covids burn through the anti maskers/vaxxers. Half a dozen jackals at least up heah…