rural roads & byways
Greener Pastures
Story by Danielle Nadler Photography by Douglas Graham for America ’ s Routes
The warm summer sunrise steadily creeps its way across the Mid-Atlantic to light up a dusty street corner of Lincoln , Virginia . With the neighborhood school closed for the season , the village sits quiet , except for the symphony of cicadas and a rooster ’ s solo . Until an aging Subaru pulls into a gravel lot . A woman beneath a graying perm steps out , walks across the still-vacant Lincoln Road , slips a key into the post office ’ s front door and disappears inside .
This corner , which serves as a venue for a friendly game of tugof-war , between Virginia ’ s old and new , is silent again . But just for a moment .
The postal worker returns , now carrying a tri-folded flag . She clips the faded star-spangled banner in place and hoists it toward the sunrise . And , as if it were a flag waving on drivers at a race track ’ s starting line , the village traffic — both foot and car — picks up .
“ Mornin ’,” a neighbor offers to a passerby while fetching the newspaper from his driveway .
A grumpy-sounding Ford truck carrying stonemason and sheep farmer Allen Cochran kicks up dust as it rolls up to the post
Allen Cochran moves his sheep to another pasture near the village of Lincoln . wander I fall • winter 2021 7