When I was a kid there was a hill down the field from my house that just waited for winter. And every winter, as it had promised the spring before, a thick blanket of snow would return to provide the best sledding in the neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids made evening pilgrimages with their aluminum saucers to its summit, eager to fly off its snowy peak, down its deadly slopes and into hysterical, icy oblivion. Screaming and shouting, each of us would take turns down its steep banks, We'd re-emerge at its crest moments later, panting from the long return trip, and eagerly await our next flirtation with certain death. Snow suits and blue jeans heavy with snow, wet socks twisted tightly down around the toes of our ice-filled boots, and mittens long since lost, we'd joyfully weather the gray-skied hours, sledding and marching, sledding and marching, down and up the Hill late into the evening, when we’d hear the call and, exhausted, troop home to hot dinners and warm, dry clothes.
The Hill was marvelous to behold. Ancient and natural, bordered on one side by an abrupt and dense furrow of trees and brambles, on the other by a modest highway, and ending suddenly in a large cement ditch, its vast expanse was white and silent in winter, green and fragrant with penny royal in summer. Two steep, almost 90° banks joined by a slight decline of only five or six feet and followed immediately by a long, sloping grade prolonged an already exhilarating cruise into a trip to thrill any child. With its ponderous potential buried in its uneven slopes, the Hill was a favorite spot in summer too, when we’d roll down its golden banks of dandelions, howling dizzily as we staggered back up its sides to roll again. The most foolhardy among us would often run down, gaining momentum exponentially, cartoon-like legs whirling wildly beneath, until gravity and laughter would overcome him and he'd pitch forward with riotous delight. And in winter, as unwary spectators would drive by, we’d take shameless pleasure at reenacting with melodramatic anguish fatal injuries from our great gravity-defying saucer rides, only to run away laughing uproariously when someone would stop to offer aid. Yet, no bones were ever really broken; no noses bloodied. We must have been made of rubber.
The Hill had stood as I have described it for generations. A familiar landmark, it had been traveled up and down thousands of times by everyone in town going to and from work, visiting the neighboring town, heading to the village for a movie or dinner out. And everyone had special memories, though granted not all of them necessarily pleasant ones, of the Hill. You see, the Hill it seemed was not particularly fond of mechanical apparatus and was especially hostile to bicycles and their riders, both in the perilously swift ride down and the painfully arduous push back up. Nor was its icy winter road inviting to vehicles. Many a night I'd sit in my bedroom and hear tires spinning on the ice, as Beetle and snowplow alike were indifferently dispatched into one of its alpine banks. It even inflicted a mortal wound on my own Radio Flyer one summer when, thinking to re-enact the exhilarating flights of winter, I foolishly rode the luckless wagon pell-mell down the Hill, teeth rattling dangerously in my ten year old head, certain as I lurched down its side that death was only seconds away. I survived with only superficial injuries (and a very sore tailbone), but the wagon’s front tires would forevermore be splayed.
It was this animosity, then, this malevolent attitude towards things mechanical, that was finally, and sadly, the Hill's undoing.
I should explain that the Hill was one of the boundaries of the State Hospital where my father (where just about everybody's father) worked, and where, for almost 30 years, I called home. My family lived on the grounds, as many staff families did, and so for many of us the Hill was a twice daily experience at least. Whether walking, riding, driving, skiing, sledding, bicycling, rolling or running, one couldn’t go down to town or school nor get back home again without going down and up the Hill. And, because it was, in effect, the main entrance to the State Hospital, it was groomed and trimmed and meticulously cared for to reflect the importance it held as the pinnacle of the institution. Its steepness, Freud might have argued had he visited, was no mere accident, but a testimony to the rigorous and often arduous journey on which one must embark to regain the level footing of sanity. But that's another story.
In summer at least, the Hill had to be mowed. For all its beauty and majesty and potential, it was, after all, only a large, albeit very large, clump of dirt, rock and grass. And since, except to the children and a few adults, there was nothing magical about the Hill -- it had no supernatural grass that would grow only 2 inches and no longer -- that meant someone, or in this case several someones, had to mow it. And quite a job it was.
Once upon a time, patients would mow the grounds. They would be sent out in crews, the sane and the not-so-sane, with simple rotary mowers, to tame the acres and acr
es of lawns that made up the Hospital grounds. Teams of men, all dressed in hospital drab, would patiently mow -- around trees, up steep banks and down, over hidden woodchuck holes, under immense pines. The whirling blades of their simple machines would mingle with the sounds of summer, and the moist, fresh smell of new-mown grass would drench the air. There was satisfaction in this simple task, and the Hill showed no animosity towards either men or machines as they made their way, week after week, summer after summer, across its green terraces and down its high banks. These men were much like us children -- moving across the Hill with ease, tracing patterns as they went.
And so the Hill stood for all the seasons of my childhood -- noisy children and quiet men crisscrossing its angular sides, defying gravity or surrendering to it through the years.
But slowly technology ascended. Time passed and the crews of quiet men and simple machines were replaced by loud, intrusive tractors pulling long blade assemblies, piloted by solitary men who seemed to find little pleasure in their task. Isolated from the fragrant expanse and aloof atop their fuming machines, they rumbled vacantly across the turf. Yet, while making short work of most of the grounds, these men and machines would struggle against the Hill, often leaning precariously over an edge or sometimes running wildly down a slope, digging huge earthy scars in the luxuriant green hillside, scars that remained like exposed gashes in its sides. Woodchuck holes would routinely grab wheels, leaving disabled machines abandoned for hours or days awaiting rescue, and there would often be patches here and there of tall weeds, too difficult to reach with the massive machines, emblems of neglect and indifference dotting the hillside.
No longer beautiful, the Hill looked wounded and forgotten. By now, we had all grown and left and no children remained to follow us. Patients, thanks to medications and a new philosophy, were no longer encouraged to participate in their environment and many instead spent their days sleeping on benches or wandering the grounds with little of value to do. The Hill, once immense and inspiring, was now merely a nuisance to mow.
When I returned home, after many years' absence, I was saddened but not surprised to see that the face of the Hill had been changed. Regrettably, the two steep banks had been leveled. In their place was a single, unremarkable grade. Tamed by idle minds with little spirit and less imagination, it had been stripped of its uniqueness.
Certainly over the years there was no lack of willing manpower to mow the Hill. It gave summer days a purpose to those who might otherwise have had none. And in winter it was a treasured playmate for generations of children. To the children of subsequent generations it is now merely a hill, just one more common, unremarkable thing in their lives.
If I believed in omens I might be inclined to say the leveling of the Hill was a sign of things to come. Now no longer a State
Hospital, the grounds and buildings have been surrendered to house prisoners, none of whom enjoy the freedom to stroll through and enjoy the grounds and woods that surround them. Once an environment of rehabilitation, now the grounds, where not barricaded with razor-like barbed wire, go largely ignored or unused, fenced or paved over. Natural beauty has been displaced by base technological ugliness, designed as much it seems to keep the restorative environment out as to keep dangerous criminals in. It makes me question why such a place would be sacrificed for those who cannot be permitted to benefit from it.
The Hill as I knew it is gone, and so are the times in which it stood. What now survives is a sadly familiar hallmark of man's willingness to compromise nature for convenience. Leveled to make life easy for someone, the hill no longer stands as the summit of a beneficent institution but represents instead cheerless compromise and acquiescence. It sits sadly lifeless, its distant images of children tumbling and men moving gracefully across the fragrant grasses of summer slowly fading away.
© by Erich Trapp
1996
The Hill was marvelous to behold. Ancient and natural, bordered on one side by an abrupt and dense furrow of trees and brambles, on the other by a modest highway, and ending suddenly in a large cement ditch, its vast expanse was white and silent in winter, green and fragrant with penny royal in summer. Two steep, almost 90° banks joined by a slight decline of only five or six feet and followed immediately by a long, sloping grade prolonged an already exhilarating cruise into a trip to thrill any child. With its ponderous potential buried in its uneven slopes, the Hill was a favorite spot in summer too, when we’d roll down its golden banks of dandelions, howling dizzily as we staggered back up its sides to roll again. The most foolhardy among us would often run down, gaining momentum exponentially, cartoon-like legs whirling wildly beneath, until gravity and laughter would overcome him and he'd pitch forward with riotous delight. And in winter, as unwary spectators would drive by, we’d take shameless pleasure at reenacting with melodramatic anguish fatal injuries from our great gravity-defying saucer rides, only to run away laughing uproariously when someone would stop to offer aid. Yet, no bones were ever really broken; no noses bloodied. We must have been made of rubber.
The Hill had stood as I have described it for generations. A familiar landmark, it had been traveled up and down thousands of times by everyone in town going to and from work, visiting the neighboring town, heading to the village for a movie or dinner out. And everyone had special memories, though granted not all of them necessarily pleasant ones, of the Hill. You see, the Hill it seemed was not particularly fond of mechanical apparatus and was especially hostile to bicycles and their riders, both in the perilously swift ride down and the painfully arduous push back up. Nor was its icy winter road inviting to vehicles. Many a night I'd sit in my bedroom and hear tires spinning on the ice, as Beetle and snowplow alike were indifferently dispatched into one of its alpine banks. It even inflicted a mortal wound on my own Radio Flyer one summer when, thinking to re-enact the exhilarating flights of winter, I foolishly rode the luckless wagon pell-mell down the Hill, teeth rattling dangerously in my ten year old head, certain as I lurched down its side that death was only seconds away. I survived with only superficial injuries (and a very sore tailbone), but the wagon’s front tires would forevermore be splayed.
It was this animosity, then, this malevolent attitude towards things mechanical, that was finally, and sadly, the Hill's undoing.
I should explain that the Hill was one of the boundaries of the State Hospital where my father (where just about everybody's father) worked, and where, for almost 30 years, I called home. My family lived on the grounds, as many staff families did, and so for many of us the Hill was a twice daily experience at least. Whether walking, riding, driving, skiing, sledding, bicycling, rolling or running, one couldn’t go down to town or school nor get back home again without going down and up the Hill. And, because it was, in effect, the main entrance to the State Hospital, it was groomed and trimmed and meticulously cared for to reflect the importance it held as the pinnacle of the institution. Its steepness, Freud might have argued had he visited, was no mere accident, but a testimony to the rigorous and often arduous journey on which one must embark to regain the level footing of sanity. But that's another story.
In summer at least, the Hill had to be mowed. For all its beauty and majesty and potential, it was, after all, only a large, albeit very large, clump of dirt, rock and grass. And since, except to the children and a few adults, there was nothing magical about the Hill -- it had no supernatural grass that would grow only 2 inches and no longer -- that meant someone, or in this case several someones, had to mow it. And quite a job it was.
Once upon a time, patients would mow the grounds. They would be sent out in crews, the sane and the not-so-sane, with simple rotary mowers, to tame the acres and acr
es of lawns that made up the Hospital grounds. Teams of men, all dressed in hospital drab, would patiently mow -- around trees, up steep banks and down, over hidden woodchuck holes, under immense pines. The whirling blades of their simple machines would mingle with the sounds of summer, and the moist, fresh smell of new-mown grass would drench the air. There was satisfaction in this simple task, and the Hill showed no animosity towards either men or machines as they made their way, week after week, summer after summer, across its green terraces and down its high banks. These men were much like us children -- moving across the Hill with ease, tracing patterns as they went.And so the Hill stood for all the seasons of my childhood -- noisy children and quiet men crisscrossing its angular sides, defying gravity or surrendering to it through the years.
But slowly technology ascended. Time passed and the crews of quiet men and simple machines were replaced by loud, intrusive tractors pulling long blade assemblies, piloted by solitary men who seemed to find little pleasure in their task. Isolated from the fragrant expanse and aloof atop their fuming machines, they rumbled vacantly across the turf. Yet, while making short work of most of the grounds, these men and machines would struggle against the Hill, often leaning precariously over an edge or sometimes running wildly down a slope, digging huge earthy scars in the luxuriant green hillside, scars that remained like exposed gashes in its sides. Woodchuck holes would routinely grab wheels, leaving disabled machines abandoned for hours or days awaiting rescue, and there would often be patches here and there of tall weeds, too difficult to reach with the massive machines, emblems of neglect and indifference dotting the hillside.
No longer beautiful, the Hill looked wounded and forgotten. By now, we had all grown and left and no children remained to follow us. Patients, thanks to medications and a new philosophy, were no longer encouraged to participate in their environment and many instead spent their days sleeping on benches or wandering the grounds with little of value to do. The Hill, once immense and inspiring, was now merely a nuisance to mow.
When I returned home, after many years' absence, I was saddened but not surprised to see that the face of the Hill had been changed. Regrettably, the two steep banks had been leveled. In their place was a single, unremarkable grade. Tamed by idle minds with little spirit and less imagination, it had been stripped of its uniqueness.
Certainly over the years there was no lack of willing manpower to mow the Hill. It gave summer days a purpose to those who might otherwise have had none. And in winter it was a treasured playmate for generations of children. To the children of subsequent generations it is now merely a hill, just one more common, unremarkable thing in their lives.
If I believed in omens I might be inclined to say the leveling of the Hill was a sign of things to come. Now no longer a State
Hospital, the grounds and buildings have been surrendered to house prisoners, none of whom enjoy the freedom to stroll through and enjoy the grounds and woods that surround them. Once an environment of rehabilitation, now the grounds, where not barricaded with razor-like barbed wire, go largely ignored or unused, fenced or paved over. Natural beauty has been displaced by base technological ugliness, designed as much it seems to keep the restorative environment out as to keep dangerous criminals in. It makes me question why such a place would be sacrificed for those who cannot be permitted to benefit from it.The Hill as I knew it is gone, and so are the times in which it stood. What now survives is a sadly familiar hallmark of man's willingness to compromise nature for convenience. Leveled to make life easy for someone, the hill no longer stands as the summit of a beneficent institution but represents instead cheerless compromise and acquiescence. It sits sadly lifeless, its distant images of children tumbling and men moving gracefully across the fragrant grasses of summer slowly fading away.
© by Erich Trapp
1996
