Sound Travels in the Country

The term “ambulance chaser” had a focused and singular meaning when I was a little girl. If one of the county’s emergency vehicles or fire truck made their way past our driveway, the sound floating up the hill to us, then my father went out to the truck to follow. Sound travels far in the country, bouncing off of barns and through copses of trees.  Maybe they were headed back to town, maybe the sound was distorted. But my father would follow, prompted not by ghoulish curiosity nor a desire to profit from someone’s incident/accident/tragedy – but to make sure that everyone was OK.  In those days, there were more family members living on our road – elderly cousins and great-aunts, inhabiting old family houses on farms where anything could happen. Usually, Daddy came back to announce that everything was fine, and our day would progress normally.

A bonfire by the creek.

I was reminded of this because, a few minutes ago, an EMS truck, lights flashing and siren bellowing, sped past my driveway, where I peered out from the second story windows of my office. One minute after I finished craning my neck to peer from the windows, following the track of the vehicle down the hill and to the west, my cell phone rang. It was my mother, making sure I was alright – she too had heard the ominous peal.

My mother and her pony.

If you had asked me 20 years ago if ever saw myself returning to the land of my youth (and the literal soil upon which many prior generations trod) – I would have laughed until I was dizzy with the hilarity of the suggestion.

Family, circa 1911.

From age 11, I debated college possibilities, all far removed from Kentucky. I watched my older siblings go off to school and thought with satisfaction about how I was going to leave and never, ever come back.

Not many farmers keep horses for farm work these days – in our case, for working cattle and checking on things – but we do.

And, fate finds me here, in front of three historic windows (for those interested in fenestration, there is a larger 12/1 double-hung sash window, flanked by slightly narrower 9/1 double-hung sash windows), looking out at a gray December day, and feeling sentimental as some sort of precipitation makes its way down from the heavens. (I believe it is snow.)

Cats and dogs at the back door in the 1950s.

When you are young, forever is – well, forever. Time has no ending.

But as the years increase, the fragility of our human connections comes into sharp focus. My parents aren’t as young as I would like, and that is one reason this ramshackle farmhouse and overgrown farm called out to me. I wanted to be close, so I could help out.

Horses have always played a big role in our family.

And even as, years ago, I strained against the constraints of family and small town life, the farm nestled about me, the most safe and secure relationship I had during some tumultuous times. I knew the curve of every stream bed, sat in the crook of every climbable sycamore tree, and stretched my muscles on every hill. In the spring, I visited all the clumps of daffodils left by long-vanished home sites, and if I squinted, I thought I could see those former residents. I would listen to every sound of the natural world around me, and it was pure comfort.  When puberty threatened eruption by hormones, or the cruelty of peers left me feeling stranded, I sought refuge in the farm.

All of this played out in my head as I heard the sirens grow louder and then recede. Sound travels in the country, even through time.