The road

The road runs through the open spaces of farmer’s fields for a few kilometres before it connects to the highway and its snarl of transport trucks and daily commuters. Once a concession road that served as access for the few farms along its length, the road is now used as a bypass to avoid the village with its 50 kilometre-per-hour speed limit and single stop sign because those just “slow you down too much”.

But except for a few minutes in the morning and afternoon when the countrified urbanites who have moved out here rush to and from their jobs in the city, the road is pretty quiet, with the silence broken only by the infrequent rumble of a tractor being shifted from one field to another, or the sound of the train whistle as the twice-daily freight thunders past on the nearby level crossing.

Beside the road, under a solitary maple tree hundreds of metres from the nearest house, someone placed these two chairs. In the winter the prevailing winds blow around them, creating intricate patterns in the drifts of snow. And in the summer, someone carefully tends the grass, plants a few flowers, and keeps the corn rows from encroaching. But no one is ever seen sitting in them.

So year round they stand there, begging those travelers of the road who are in no rush to be someplace else to stop and sit a while.

Perhaps I’ll do that one day.