A Palpable Past

In thinking about place, and what binds people to it, I ponder the beauty of the landscape, the scale of roads and buildings, and the people, of course, always the people.

And then there is history. Not one's own family history, but a learned body of knowledge, something you can pick up from books and conversations, from paying close attention to the woods you walk through.

On Saturday I met two men who have mapped the forgotten roads of our area. They started with two places, an old house in Vienna and the site of a mill a few miles away, and they charted the road that ran between the two. This is only one of their projects. They have also helped to move an old school, protect an old road and add historical markers to our neighborhood.

For them, the past is palpable. And because of them, it is more real for all of us.