Things Seen on Farm To Market Road East of Donnelly

For the past several weeks, Idaho State Highway 55 thru Donnelly has been torn up by construction, so as I wend my way to Cascade on my weekly round of appointments, I’ve started taking the long way round on the aptly-named Farm To Market Road. This road runs all the way back to McCall & eventually intersects with Highway 55 south of Donnelly—along the way, you pass thru historic Roseberry, a partially restored settlement that dated back to the very early 20th century—venerable by local standards. On either side of Roseberry, there are pastures & pines & locusts & creeks & cattle—Idaho bucolic in all its beauty. These are some of the things I’ve seen.

• Behind a whitewashed fence (in serious need of re-painting), a wood bench swing hung by chain from a locust tree
• The water in a cattail-lined irrigation ditch turned blue by the reflected sky
• A sheet of fog rising from a hilltop to the east shimmering a spectral white in the morning sun
• A faded red barn
• A large slab of gray driftwood erected as a sculpture in front of an old white house with a red tin roof
• Mulleins lining both sides of Farm To Market Road, some taller than a man, growing from the gravel
• Cordwood rounds laid out in a large circle in a pasture
• On the other side of a creek, more cordwood—maybe about a quarter of a cord—stacked & surrounded by cattle
• A pasture with at least a dozen skeletal dead & white pines, the bark peeling from them in dark gray layers
• Four turkey buzzards circling high over the pasture, riding thermals & never flapping their wings
• A black metal sign in the shape of a large, wooly sheep at the end of a gravel driveway
• A yellow highway sign saying “Bridge Out” in the midst of a pasture lane
• The locusts trees lining the road with leaves turning yellow from the trees’ crowns down, but still green toward the trunk
• The bandstand at Roseberry, painted red & white, with pastures & piney hills in the distance
• An Amish buggy parked next to a green plastic garbage can; the can rests on an old-fashioned wooden two-wheel hand truck
• The Roseberry General Store at the intersection of East Roseberry & Farm To Market Roads—an old yellow Shell pump & two rusty old red wagons being used as planters
• A red fox waiting for my car to pass before crossing Farm To Market Road in Roseberry
• A black 1919 Model T for sale
• A pasture gate fashioned from two tall, weathered cedar posts & a strand of barbed wire
• Cedar split fence posts leaning at such an angle they almost touch
• A mound of earth & squared stones—an old foundation
• An abandoned osprey
• A red fox standing on a stack of large round hay bales
• A single-wide trailer under a weathered green tin roof; icicle Christmas lights dangle (unlit) from the roof—an array of electrical transformers across the road