Of oversized beans

In the dying days of 2015 my journey to work took me along the edge and over the big bridge before heading inland toward the waterfalls. This happens to be a portion of the route connecting The Centre of the Universe to The Border. This means that vast numbers of large trucks go to and fro along this stretch of highway.

Do you find them mysterious, those large transport trucks? I do. What could they be lugging from one end of the country to the other?  Sometimes we can see their cargo of shiny new cars, or they might be carting pigs to market (let's not think of where the pigs really are going), but what of the enclosed trucks.  Are they full of bicycles? Socks? Q-tips? Limes? Mmmm... limes.

The particular trucks had open beds carrying very large...somethings... strapped down with giant-sized bungee cords. Each truck was part of a procession that included a police car with lights flashing and a pick-up truck bearing a sign: OVERSIZED LOAD. The oversized bits looked like segments of a concrete tunnel large enough to drive a car through.

Every day I would see at least one of those processions, if not on the way to work, then while heading back home. Sometimes it would be while driving home from visiting the Nuts, and that route is a straight line down the centre on a rural route. Were they following me? Was it all a figment of my imagination? (I'd been spinning stories about what the pieces were for, everything from a jail break tunnel (I don't let facts like there being no prison in the area stop a good yarn from being spun.) to a tunnel under the lake  for cyclists.

Then one day, to my surprise, I noticed a tower far off in the distance - like a cold war remnant outpost . Being a clever girl I deduced the giant concrete rings I'd seen booting along the roadways were components of the tower, but it wasn't until the next day I saw the tower was becoming a wind turbine, and that the horizon was littered with them. It's like they were planted in a wind turbine garden and the garden blossomed overnight - like Jack's magic beans.

I'm not sure whether wind energy is safe or efficient, or what the long term effects are on people or environment. I do think, though, that the turbines themselves are beautifully sculptural, especially from a distance. There is something pleasing about their steadiness, and their link to the past for they bring to mind the charming windmills of yore. I marvel that they make the invisible,visible and harness what happens naturally for our use.

I wonder what else might suddenly appear on the horizon one day?