Dead End Street

I live in a house on a corner lot on two dead end streets in the middle of a forest. I'm surrounded by towering pines and a two story tall mid-canopy of mature dogwood trees. Ancient azaleas run wild around back, and I've identified upwards of sixty bird species, either resident or just passing through. Oh, don't get the idea I occupy a hermitage; this is a neighborhood. Every 150 feet or so along these just-wide-enough streets you'll find one of the four or five basic house plan houses that were planted here a half century ago, back before the trees got so big. Like the trees they too have grown, most of them, burgeoning toward the property line. I like that word, burgeoning, it has a calm but relentless value. Right now I'm looking out a full-length glass storm door at a Spring downpour that is Lara's Theme-ing our driveway with dogwood petals.

The people, I'd say half of them, have been here longer than more than the half of the trees which they planted. They also have burgeoned, sending their offshoots across town, state, country, ... even the world. And yet they remain, familiar as the trees, knowing each other and waving as they pass. The rest have settled in over the years, seamlessly blending their histories, as time passes. That is what time does here, it just passes, and change isn't usually dramatic. In fact you tend to notice it more as "did" than "does".

The secret to it all, you know, is these dead end streets. No Through Traffic. Although I'm less than a hundred yards from a major highway, it has limited access, and there are woods and a fence, which also extend across the entire north side of our neighborhood capping five dead end streets and sealing us off from the research park in that direction. Frankly, any would-be sneaky adventurer would have a mile and a quarter gauntlet of nosy neighbors to run before they even got to a major street. We don't see much action here, actually.

There are no "drive-bys" on a dead end street. There are no strangers on a dead end street. You can live on a dead end street.

Regards,
Daddy