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Being Rural in Connecticut
By Jim Klaneski, Plymouth
On the morning of the day of changeover from summer to fall for me this year, I found six or eight new fallen leaves atop the solar cover of my pool. I decided to close her up before a fall storm with driving wind and rain would make the job just that much harder.
Up the road droned the sounds of the Terryville Fair: the sound of the generators powering rides, the announcements of events taking place, and the frequent squeals of jubilant children. I got out the sickle and lopping shears and cleared the weeds and deep grass away from the back of the sheds where I stack my winter wood supply.
Fallen apples in the grass, crushed by my walking, drew crowds of hardworking bees, laying by their food for winter. The leaves in the branches of a maple out front showed tinges of orange and red. Things were beginning to change around me and I could feel it on the inside.
Country life for me has pretty much always been the same. I live outside of town, own a few acres and have a regular day job. But I choose to keep as close to the land as possible and often do my work by hand. I enjoy experiencing the rhythm and cycles of the seasons … "a time for every purpose."
There is one aspect of rural life in Connecticut, though, that has changed and become difficult for me to ignore. That's the noise. It's intrusive and pervasive. I live a couple of miles from Route 6 and about three from Route 8. Yet I rarely experience quiet while at home. The sounds carry. And my road, which used to go nowhere, now is busy with what must be a lot more people going nowhere.
Soon the garden will get cleaned up and put to bed under a healthy layer of straw, the wood will be brought up from the stacks in the woods, I'll caulk around the windows and doors, and clean out the chimney as I do each fall. But every so often I'll stop and realize my awareness of the constant noise—the sounds of the highway and of countless internal combustion engines: trucks, planes, motorcycles, chainsaws, leaf blowers, lawnmowers, and weed whackers. And every so often I'll feel the need to break away and go off beyond the farthest reach of the power lines and pavement.
I'm not a man who's all that fond of winter. I've usually had my fill by the first of January. But I do enjoy those powerful New England storms that drop a foot and a half of snow around us. I enjoy the coming of nightfall and the parking of our cars as we wait it out. The thick blanket of snow deadens the sound, insulates us somewhat and slows down the activities of man. And just as I'm out there savoring the stillness and listening to the gentle sound of the flakes piling up, half a dozen snowmobiles come screaming up the road. And back and forth they race all night.
Rural life in Connecticut is still here to be had. We have never been a strictly agricultural state. Our life has always been as closely tied to industry as to our land. We hold our agricultural fairs to display our flowers and quilts, our livestock, wares and tractors. But today as we try to enjoy our moments of peace at home, having a little imagination is certainly a tremendous asset.
Usually my imaginative mind or my focus on what I'm doing carries me along nicely. But every so often I do need to go out to where the sky is truly black and where the only light comes from the billions of stars rather than from the incandescent glow of Waterbury. I need to go to where I can hear the crickets in the grass, the cicadas in the trees; to where I can hear the rhythm they keep, like the drumbeat of Native Americans, putting sound to the pulse of life that comes from the earth. I leave for a time so I can come back and reconnect. Relaxed and at peace, I can then better enjoy being rural in Connecticut.
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