Land of Giants


The house where I grew up sits very near a large natural gas pipeline that runs through the woods and timber cuts that cover most of our county. Above the buried line the gas company keeps a right-of-way as broad as a good-sized highway cleared of trees. This line, though it gets rather choked with brush in between the infrequent bush-hoggings that keep it from reverting to forest, makes a good hiking trail. While growing up I explored the line and the roads and trails it intersects for miles in either direction, sometimes with my younger brother, more often with only our family dogs for company.

The northerly leg of the line generally proved the more interesting of the two. It runs for over a mile across rolling hill country, laced with little streams. One streambed forms a miniature canyon so deep the line is actually exposed at that point. It makes a convenient foot bridge. Eventually the terrain falls steeply into a broad stretch of level bottom land. The line runs on from there, crossing a good-sized creek and then an even larger one almost the size of a small river. This big creek marked the northernmost point of my range on the pipeline; usually the land was not even dry enough to let me reach that.

Just before the pipeline reaches the end of the hills it crosses another utility right-of-way. This serves as the path of a high-tension power line. I’ve explored the power line as well.

The power line looks much more impressive than the virtually invisible pipeline. Huge steel pylons, over twenty feet square at the base and well over a hundred feet tall, support the line. The pylons march across the hilly countryside like a file of giants, standing a couple hundred yards apart with the humming power lines running between them in great shallow arcs. If Cervantes’ Don Quixote were to come to our time he would probably attack them instead of a row of windmills.

Over the recent holidays I had a chance to get out and ramble around some of my youthful haunts. One row of hills back from the power line the pipeline crosses a little stream. I had never really explored upstream from the line before, so I decided to do so one afternoon. After beating the bushes upstream for a while, I found myself on the power line, some way south of the intersection. The stream ran by the base of a particularly high and steep hill. A power pylon stood atop the hill, its base so high above me that I could not see it for the steep hillside. I had never been quite so impressed by the size of the pylons as when I suddenly found myself beneath that one.

Along the far side of the broad power line cut I recalled there being a four-wheeler trail used by hunters. The trail had gotten overgrown since last I had seen it. After crossing to the other side of the cut I found enough of it to get by on. I headed north to the intersection with the pipeline.

Sometimes one encounters a familiar sight at an unusual time and sees it in a different way. This encounter with the giant power pylons occurred in early evening, as the sun had begun to change colors in the west. The woods and hills threw the bases of the pylons into shadow. They were dark below, gold-tinted above. It turned a modern industrial-age eyesore into a beautiful sight. It was quiet, except for a little wind.

I walked to the base of the next pylon. It stood on four knee-high concrete pads. I stepped up on one and struck the great metal leg with my walking stick. It made a ring like some exotic gong or bell. I put my ear to it and listened to the odd tone. Even when the sound of my blow had died the metal continued to ring eerily in my ear. It was the sound of the wind singing through the tower’s open metal structure.

I continued on to the north. Not far past where the pipeline intersects it, the power line reaches the edge of the hills. From there it too drops steeply down into the bottom lands. I could see down the line for probably a good mile. Somewhere down near the far end of my vision I knew the line crossed a sizeable creek. In the past I have found nearby fallen logs that made the creek just passable. I did not have the time or the inclination to explore that far this evening.

The sight reminded me of a time when I had visited the power line some years before, on a rainy afternoon. The rain had made a kind of hissing as it struck the live lines high above the ground. The misty hills really had looked haunted by giants that day, a whole file of giants that disappeared in the soggy haze as they marched down into the creek bottoms. This evening the sky was clear, but night would be coming on soon. I had to head for home.

So I returned to the pipeline and turned south toward my parents’ house. A little further down the line I crossed the little creek that I had explored earlier. It gurgled through a band of muddy, grassy marsh where I had to step carefully to keep from soaking my tennis shoes.
As I continued down the line the western sky through the trees began to redden. Soon I would be inside with family. I felt deeply happy to be on home ground.

D.L.
Do you take notes during your adventures, or journal shortly after? Your pieces have a lot of detail in them, and that almost always sucks me in and makes me feel like I'm there.

John

Thanks for the compliment, John!

I don't write anything down until I actually sit down to write the piece. I "write" it in my head before that. The actual writing on this one took an hour or so.