Year 42, Midsummer
I help edit other people's Resident Notes, and for some time I've been saying I don't have one of my own because route work is mostly checking that ordinary things are still ordinary. One of the other editors finally said that sounded like a note already. I suspect she was tired of hearing my excuse. So this is about my two paths and what usually happens when I check them.
I was born in Year 14. The roads of the old system are stories to me, though I have walked with many resurrected people who remember them very well. They tell me route work once meant planning for dangers I have never had to consider. Mine is peaceful work. It still includes wet boards, misplaced tools, roots where roots should not be, and people who give directions by pointing with their whole arm.
There are two ways from the north tool house to the lower terraces. The direct path takes about twelve minutes if you're empty-handed and nobody stops you. Some walkers insist it takes ten. I think they begin counting after the north gate and finish before the terrace steps. The path around Apricot Hill usually takes between twenty-eight and thirty-two minutes. I write “half an hour” on the route board because it is easier than writing a range and then explaining it.
Apricot Hill was one of the first slopes restored in this district. The oldest trees were planted before I was born. Now the terraces send fruit to nearby homes, work crews, and the Return Center at Bethel-Hill Country. During the main harvest, the long path smells like apricots before the hill is even in view. It also becomes sticky near the sorting tables. I have written both facts in the route record, though only one is useful for maintenance.
I look after both paths. My pocket notebook has three lists: look at, bring back, and ask someone. I write things down even when I'm certain I will remember them. Especially then. I also carry chalk, cord, two wedges, spare pegs, and a small mallet. More than once I've carried all of that and forgotten enough lunch.
The long route has two short plank bridges. A board on each one stays damp longer than the others after rain, so I check the edges with my thumb, look underneath, and tap around the pegs. Both boards were sound yesterday. I wrote, “Drying slowly; no softness; check after next rain.” The boards are cedar from the restored north slope. Trees grow well there again, but timber is still timber and rain is still rain. That is why we keep route records in Paradise.
Davi was at the spring with three clay cups. The first held water from before the new gravel bed, the second from after its first section, and the third from the outlet. I had meant to say hello and keep moving because I was going to the terraces for the narrow root saw. I did not keep moving.
All three were safe to drink. Davi is trying to improve the taste and keep feet from wearing down the spring bank. I could tell the first and second cups apart. The second tasted cleaner. I could not honestly tell much difference between the second and third, though Davi could. I wrote that down too. “Davi can taste a difference that Mara cannot” is still a result. He asked me to try once more after the next layer of gravel is settled, and I said I would.
I was at the spring for eighteen minutes. I know because I wrote the time when I arrived and again when I left. I often say that I dislike delays. My notebook suggests that I mostly dislike not knowing how long they are.
At the next fork, a woman with one of the blue orientation maps asked me how to reach the orchard instruction group. She had been resurrected eleven days earlier and was still using the old name for a village that had once stood south of the hill. The name was printed in small type on the back of her map, so we found where she meant. I walked with her as far as the terrace marker. She apologized three times for taking me away from my work. I told her that helping someone use a route is route work. I did not time that part.
A little farther on, some children were measuring the hill's shadow. They needed someone to hold the end of the cord and then asked me which stone should count as the center. I told them that measuring paths did not make me an expert on the sun. They chose the stone themselves. I held the cord, kept the knot straight, and tried not to lean. That was probably the useful part.
By the time I reached the lower terraces, the narrow root saw had already been collected and was being carried back by someone who took the direct path. Good. The root on the north path could be dealt with that afternoon. I sat on the terrace wall and ate the bread and apricot I had packed. It had seemed like enough when I left. I added “bring more lunch” to the notebook. That line has appeared before.
A route round is not only about the walking surface. People tell me where a cart wheel catches, where water gathers, or where a handrail feels loose. I am not very useful with “something feels wrong,” so I ask them to walk with me and point to the exact place. Sometimes we find a defect. Sometimes I cannot repeat it, and that goes in the notebook too. I would rather write that I do not know than make a repair to the wrong thing.
The path is different at different hours. Early in the morning I meet orchard workers and people walking to their assignments. Later there are lesson groups, carts of fruit, and new neighbors learning the district. Near evening, families take the long way on purpose. I keep scheduling my rounds as though I will meet none of them. This has not yet worked.
I do not take the long path when a crew is waiting for me or the work is urgent. On an ordinary round, I prefer it. We have time to make a path better before it becomes dangerous, and people have time to notice small changes and tell me about them. I know resurrected neighbors who still find that remarkable. I have never known anything else, but I do not want to treat it as ordinary in the sense of unimportant.
At household worship this week we read Psalm 104:13, about Jehovah watering the mountains and satisfying the earth by his work. I thought of it at the spring. Cleaner water now moves through gravel instead of cutting mud across the boards.
Yesterday I thanked Jehovah for sound boards, cleaner water coming through the gravel, restored trees on the hill, and a woman resurrected eleven days earlier finding her way to an orchard lesson. Then I took the direct path home. It took eleven minutes and forty seconds. Yes, I timed it.
That is my Resident Note. The other editors were right that I had one. Tomorrow I intend to check the direct path and not stop at the spring. Davi will probably be there, so I am calling that an intention, not a promise.