Slippery Slope

Why one slippery slope? My husband and I disagree on why it didn't turn into our actual farm name (Middlebury Hills), but Slippery Slope was my first choice as a name for our land, right after we moved in. The reasons should be obvious. I do have a problem after all.

But sticking with the literal interpretation, our drive in those first years was strictly a farm road that climbed the hill and petered out at our back fence line, bypassing the abandoned house entirely. Farm roads are not graded or leveled or usually graveled for that matter. They are often simply ruts. Tractors use farm roads to get into the fields. Tractors do not often get stuck. We did not own a tractor.

We quickly learned that snow in the winter (with no method of plowing) and mud in the spring sometimes meant trekking up the hill on foot, but we were still enamored of such stuff (how rustic!). And I had four-wheel drive. I had not yet been in a car accident, so I would come home from my off-farm job actually excited to shift into four-wheel and gun it up the hill as fast as I could. If I could clear the moderately steep curve from base to barn, I had it made. On occasion, I would try this multiple times.

Of course, if I missed, I faced rather steep peril on my left and rather hard rock on my right. Still, the thrill! An equally perilous descent in the morning involved sideways slipping if you didn't achieve minimum speed. It was always slow going on the county road after that as the tires plonked mud all over the place, smacking into the bottom of the car with remarkable force. We left trails of splatter when we left home.

At first we were dedicated to maintaining this thrilling and picturesque drive. We loved it, even as the thistles encroached upon it over summer. One afternoon I hiked up the hill and discovered all these tracks—huge tire treads, chain marks, giant divots, and a gouging scrape off to one side. Lots of displaced mud. And I was upset! I still thought all the weeds growing there were pretty after all.

At the house, I discovered a Fed Ex package, but it wasn't for a good day or two that I correlated the apparent arrival of a delivery vehicle with the tracks in the driveway. As it turned out, the Fed Ex guy, trying my method of approach, went down the perilous left-hand drop, where he nearly flipped over and was utterly mired until something powerful enough to tow a truck arrived to haul him all the way back up. Something like a tractor.

He told us later it was a lovely place to eat lunch. We have a beautiful view, even from down there . . .

What was my second choice for a farm name? Thistle Hill. Again, isn't it obvious?