Sunday evening on the hilltop, rolling away from the sun with the earth, is a fine time to assess the weekend.
We are grateful to live near the Great Allegheny Passage and still amazed we can ride our bicycles all the way to D.C., through woodlands, across mountain streams, along rivers, and through small towns.
Of those towns, we are particularly fond of Meyersdale. Why is difficult to say, but what's a town if not its people?
We stood among a hundred or more of them in the dusk as they gathered to watch the first lighting of new streetlights, a quiet celebration of a completed "streetscape" project. Hot cider and cookies were free.
The new lights are lovely, the new sidewalks are immaculate, the diagonal parking is fun, and the new stop lights and crossing signals are impressive, even if no one could say why they were necessary ("talk to the state," was a common reply).
Military music opened the event, as the oldest continuous fife and drum corps in the country marched down Main Street, then stood in front of the old bank building and listened with the rest of us to the speeches, most of which were emotional.
Raised in the country and living there still, we are not town people -- perhaps that makes us less civilized -- but we can only imagine how it feels to be the ninth or tenth generation of townfolk, to be so connected to each other, to see how pretty Main Street looks, and to think of those we wished were still here to see it.
We envy them that.
