Traversing The TAT (Trans-America Trail) Chapter 7

The following morning, the sun rose quickly and immediately heated the muggy air to a grey haze.  We finished a quick breakfast and headed out to the TAT once again.  We were quickly back on the TAT and were greeted by narrow twisting roads under a lush green canopy from the surrounding trees.  The traffic was non-existent leaving us to enjoy the swoopy corners and somewhat cooler air.

Again I was riding at the tail of the group, and clouds of dust rose from the gravel track.  But it didn’t diminish the pleasure that the TAT was gifting to us.  I watched from the back of the pack as Tracy faded into the distance and MaryLee and Kim played a kind of moto tag with each other.  MaryLee would lead the way and Kim would sprint up to her until the dust began to get too heavy and faded back.  I was enjoying the playful component of the ride immensely.

By the way, if you don’t know, click on any one of the pictures in the gallery below and it will open that picture into a full size picture and then you can click your way through the remainder of the pictures in either direction in full size.

But after about an hour, the verdant canopies began to part and we found ourselves in farm country.  Green fields contrasted with golden fields of grain.  As we rode along, we saw evidence that the locals were working the fields to get the crops of grain in.    We were used to seeing the huge plastic rolls of hay that are widely seen in New England.  But the stacks we were seeing were vastly different.

Small piles were neatly stacked along side each other.  The stacks consisted of what appeared to be individually bound bundles tossed in opposing directions making for a tightly bundled and geometrically shaped pile.  We had never seen stacking like this and to us, it didn’t seem to be prepared by the large farm equipment that roams some of the fields back home.  But something was stacking these small works of art dotting the fields.  Who or what could be doing it?

It wasn’t long before we got our answer.  As we turned from one small road onto another, there in a field directly in front of us was a pair of beautiful harnessed draft horses.  As draft animals, they were huge and they dwarfed their owner who stood close by.  Clad in jeans and a shirt topped off by a large brimmed black hat, a young Amish man watched as we approached and ducked down seemingly trying to hide.  So it was him who had been making these beautiful stacks of grain.

Tracy  stopped to take a picture and the farmer insisted that he not to take one, so as requested, Tracy put away his camera, said hello and rode off.  As we continued our way through the county, it became clear that we were in fact in an Amish enclave.  Good sized farms were all about but suddenly I noticed something a bit odd.  At the roadside, there were no telephone poles and no wires running into the farms.  They had no electricity!

Kim’s uncle is a farmer and we know how hard and thankless a job farming can be.  Many, many hours are spent in the fields trying to bring a crop in and/or taking care of the animals.  It has to be one of the most difficult and exhausting jobs in the world.  And then it dawned on me.  As difficult as it was to be a farmer, they often use electricity and power tools to accomplish the day’s tasks.  Now take away the electricity and all the power tools and you have the life of an Amish farmer.  It makes you think about how committed those people are to their beliefs.  Forsaking even the most rudimentary of power equipment, they still carry on the difficult day’s work without complaint.  It truly is an amazing act of faith to maintain such a life.

It also made me think about the little works of art that were the grain piles.  No farm equipment making 10 foot rolls of hay were being used.  The Amish used their own two hands and made each bundle individually.  When you looked at the size of some of the fields, I felt a deep admiration for those people who toil so hard, while the tools to make their lives easier went unused.  Their faith was their tool and they used it well to maintain a hard but appreciated life.   Witnessing this, I thought to myself that to be Amish, you have to be a very stout person.  Very stout indeed.

The enclave was fairly large and it took us about 10 minutes to pass through it.  Along the way, we passed one of their well known plain black buggies.  Pulled by a single horse, the buggy made its way along the road, with its lantern headlights and tail lights.  Two women sat in the buggy, one middle aged and another old.  I could just make out their black clothes and bonnets as I rode by.

It made quite a contrasting scene.  Immediately in front of me were two women in a single horse drawn wooden carriage.  While just ahead, I could see two women riding on small horses of steel and aluminum that far eclipsed the power of the larger single horse buggy.  Riding through this little enclave, really helped me put things into perspective and open my eyes to a different way of life.  A way of life that could be more physically demanding, but for them, more meaningful.

Soon after passing the buggy, once again the fields started to fade and we found ourselves traveling through very sparsely populated land.  The road narrowed and the trees closed in.  The road was now barely large enough to fit a single car, but it was nice to be in the shade at times.  What structures there were on this road were very old and most abandoned.  Wooden planks of siding sagged from the buildings, age having long since taken the remnants of colorful paint away.  But in their grey hued glory, they told a story of remote living and of farms that had long since come and gone.

We lazily dawdled along in the oppressive heat under the canopy of green leaves and grey branches.  At times, the gravel road gave way small concrete water crossings an inch or two deep.  At first they were no more than 50 feet across, but they soon got wider and more treacherous.  You might ask how a couple of inches of water might constitute a treacherous hazard.  How could water on a hard surface only one or two inches deep cause any problems?  We’ll talk about that in the next chapter.