Butterflies and gravel roads

Wanting desperately to live in a place like this was, I think, the last great passion of my life. When we were considering buying this house my mind was all awhirl with thoughts of the woods, the pond, the gardens and the garden shed, the chicken coop and the little barn, all the rustic little touches in the house and the precious privacy. No need for curtains here. I came on gravel roads and from the mailboxes back a half mile on a sand road, but they made no impression on me. It was a shock that first March to come home from a trip after a big thaw and wonder how we were ever going to get back to our little house in the woods. There are four possible ways to get from the highway to our house. That spring, and for several springs to come, all four ways were bad during breakup. Marijuana Lane was the name given by locals to the east/west road that goes past our mail box. It was apparently named for former residents and possibly their 'gardens'. A neighbor once told me that when she first came, several years before we did, it was really just a logging road through a shady tunnel of trees. When the frost came out of the ground it usually had two washouts. The one to the east of us was the worst. We once saw a car that had tried to cross hanging over the edge of the ditch We drove through the western washout a few times, but I never liked it much. Of the two north/south roads to the highway,one is called a Minimum Maintenance Road--enough said. The other one had two especially deep muddy morasses, one at each end. In spite of this, it was usually our best option. Get up some speed and gun 'er through. We always made it. After several years, a man stopped by and said he was running for a county office. He said our roads were a disgrace and if we voted for him he would do something about it. We did and I guess our neighbors did too. Marijuana Lane has been taken away from the township and renamed County 141. It's been widened. It gets some new gravel every summer. It's graded on a regular basis. In the winter the snow plows come several days sooner than they once did. A neighbor told us that it's even on a list to be paved, though it has been for six years. But always there is a price for progress. Several times each summer the ditches are mowed. They never were before. In late August and early September, as you drove along, you would suddenly notice drifts of something intensely blue among the grasses--clumps of fringed gentians. Now we need the Minimum Maintenance Road to see them. The other north/south road was also washed out one June when we had a flood, so bad that no one could use it. They came with big equipment on trailers from Thief River Falls and worked on it all summer and into the fall. But the muddy mess on the south end they couldn't seem to fix, though they put a culvert under it. If it rains awhile there's still fifteen feet of mud to drive through. Butterflies seem to just love mud. The other day when Bear and Sadie and I drove through we were suddenly surrounded by a cloud of butterflies. "Isn't it pretty?", I asked them. I have no idea if they think anything is 'pretty', but it was nice to have someone to mention it to.