Roads of CommUnity Living Series #1 Old Pump Road Jericho, Vermont

Jericho Roads of CommUnity Living - #1 of a Series

"Go OUTSIDE. Don't tell anyone..."

“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy. There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” ― Charlotte Eriksson

All of Jericho's roads lead to commUnity. But what of the roads themselves. How much character and varying personalities enrich the dirt and tar that makeup Jericho lanes and trace, drives, circle, ridge, streets, and roads? Aside from where these arteries lead, what do they hold close to the heart that embodies, transects, brings us together.

They are just roads like any other you say. Tell that to the folks at the town meeting when they are discussing whether or not to have a dirt road paved, whether or not to apply more or less salt on the town roads during winter months. Offer one small comment about potholes along any Jericho road - and watch as FrontPage Forum proliferates with banshee-like cries in support of dirt roads and cries against dirt roads.

One can live in a community for any number of years, know of many town folk, befriend a few, meet up with one or another at the local Jericho Country store, one of the two libraries, town hall, while at a bake sale at the community center, during town meeting and other gathering spots across town. One can hardly not know of the towering white iconic church steeple and Snowflake Bentley sign adorning the town green, the Jericho Country Store. But how well do you know Jericho roads?

How many roads, lanes, drives, and so on, does Jericho have? And what upon them? How many houses in Jericho are over 100 years old? Do you know where each one is located? Did you know Jericho has about as many differently painted or otherwise adorned rural mailboxes as there are colors in a box of Skittles? 

Did you know there is at least one purple house in Jericho? An old pump on Pump Lane - does it function? What comes out of it when you pump it? What of the windmill - the old fashion kind, picturesque, low profile, easy on the eye. What of the birds of blue, early tis for bluebirds, though this bluebird of glass has no qualms with the slow coming spring. Will true flowers follow those pink and white artificial flowers protruding from the snow?

For to know a Jericho road today is not to say you will know it tomorrow. Just ask anyone who drives Raceway road whose crossing in summer rewards with a canopy of greens, babbling brook, soft breezes, relaxing slow drives erasing the desire of destination turning, during spring mud season, into a jolting shocking bumpy pitted and potted patchwork looking more like a wagon trail of old than a modern travel way.

When we meet we celebrate in commUnity. But then we disperse each to our own address. To know every address, every roadway that brings us all together, that makes the whole, one must walk the roads of Jericho. To do so, and with some regularity, is to begin to know what makes up this patchwork, this framed latticework of lines that leads us to meet, provides fodder for town meeting and FPF, tie us to other towns, and connects us to each other.

Jericho, what roads to community living do you have? What do they look like? How will we recognize each of you? What personality, what character do you bring to the mix that makes Jericho as a whole such a beloved special place?

Let us take a stroll along Pump Lane in Jericho and see what, at least on this one day, we shall see. Another day, along the same walk we might see more, for the eye is easily mislead, easily distracted, often missing nuggets of gold in a mine of silver. 

For now, let us relinquish any perceived notion of our quilted community. Let us first inspect the threads, their texture, color, length, the bumpiness, the fragility, the beauty, the ply that make up our roads.

For to know our roads is to begin to know the love, and attention to detail that embellishes the community of Jericho, Vermont.

Cat's eyes do the same thing as human eyes but with more finesse.

What framework is under the skin of your Jericho Road? Stay tuned for more 'walk and observe' along the streets, roads, lanes, and drives of Jericho, Vermont. 

Jericho Vermont Images of Community

Intimate, caring, and personal;

 reflecting the community and its stories.