Vermont's Rte 116 is washed out detoured around, half blocked with barriers bearing signs that say “road closed local traffic only” — still, drivers who must see for themselves [disbelieving louts] speed past my pedal bike along a road I never rode before this latest change I study farms I’ve driven by — brand new metal sheds, large machines, baled hay — now the small marble house is up for sale goldfinches bounce like grasshoppers St John’s wort is burnt from green to copper yellow flutters down from changing trees great blue heron scouts the muddied fen a local owner complains of “all the gas she's wasted” to get to where she needs to yet today, a sunny September Saturday she too rides her bike, “it’s so much safer “without all those pickups” — how many drivers slowed to admire Dow Pond before this season’s hundred-year rains? how many knew the Muddy Branch ran down the mountain into the pond through a culvert under the 50-mile-per-hour road? FEMA-funded town planners prophesy thousand-year rains, but why repair? can’t ours be the first state to see we’ve driven so much farther than anyone should go?