COVID Reflection
The valley was silent, Heather thought. Actually, it amazed her now that she stopped and thought about it. She could hear a red-winged blackbird sing. The nearest patch of marsh was, oh, down by Huguenot Street, and that was, what, a half mile away? Usually the din of Hillendale Road made it impossible to hear anything other than the mourning doves cooing from the station eaves. Now the song of a red-winged blackbird cut through half a mile of still, still air. The gravel-packed ground was crunchy beneath her boots, still rigid with the late March frost. She was conscious of each footfall as she strode through the side lot, up to the roundhouse. It was eerie how quiet it was. Pausing by the roundhouse door, she turned and looked back at the station. Silent. Its buttery yellow paint, its red window muntins, softly glowing in the young air, hutch-like roof mantling and steep and gray, gray, gray. The machine shop was silent. That was the weird thing. Even on a weekday, when the trains we...
