April 6

In most years, April is the month in which torrent rains wash the roadways and bring small rivers of effluvial sand and debris down the road. At the end of our driveway, the asphalt is depressed enough that a little backwater of silt invariably collects, leaving a sizable sandbar long after the rains have gone.

The town normally schedules sweeping to occur in late April or early May, and it is our own mechanical rite of passage to hear the big street sweeper coming by the house.

This is an odd year though, and I worry of other consequences in the decisions that the town as supposedly made. There is no sand on the roads this spring, for Paxton elected to forgo using it to treat the snowy roads, instead resorting to frequent application of salt.

The salt, of course, helps melt the roads, and it doesn’t accumulate in the way of sand, but it does go somewhere!