Jed Martin Road begins in Rumford Point and ends in Rumford Center, or does the 2-plus mile road begin in the Center and end in the Point? Never mind, it’s one of the valley’s busiest thoroughfares this summer.

The action began, as ever, with the Little League season at the ball field near Route 2. The bleachers were full for most every game. Surely the spirits of generations of avid players – think of John and Stuart Martin – are there, too.

At the other end of the road, at Andover Road, just about six weeks ago, maybe a few hundred feet ahead of me, I spied a moose, a cow moose. She was strolling down the middle of Jed Martin Road toward Andover Road. This had to be one of the moose Peter Everett sees all the time. Till that day, all I’d noticed was the moose warning sign.

I stopped. She stopped, then turned to gaze upon my car and me. I backed all the way up to Junior Barker’s house, onto his lawn (“don’t worry about it. …”), and told my tale. “Give her a minute, she’ll go back in to the woods.” Right, as always.

Then, just about the same six weeks ago, at the same end of Jed Martin Road, the Rumford Public Works crew began cutting trees, ditching, and seeding on the steep hilly side of the road: the first step in a major reconstruction project. At last!

Road work is annoying if you’re stopped by a flagger. Otherwise, ordinary road improvement is of little or no interest – unless you’ve hit a Jed Martin Road special that can flatten a tire, damage a muffler or break an axle.

The work is taking quite a while: How long will it take? “I have no idea,” said Dan Perry, second in command of the road crew. Dale Roberts is the foreman, but he was operating a huge bulldozer when I stopped to talk one day last week to learn a little about the project.

The six-man crew, for whom Town Manager Jim Doar has the warmest praise, maneuvers gargantuan equipment – seen up close, the giants make you jumpy. The crew loads old pavement into dump trucks bound for snowmobile trails. They load old, clay-like dirt into dump trucks, too. Residents, like the Pitchers, can have the old stuff for fill.

Because so much water comes off the steep banks, the crew excavates – maybe 24 inches – below the road level and line that bed with fabric. Then new, sandy soil is dumped from trucks, over the lining.

Dan excused himself to guide one of the trucks as it backed in to dump a load of new sandy soil over a stretch of the fabric. A few minutes after, a pick-up rolled to a stop near Dan. The driver was Dan’s wife, who reported that Dan’s cows had spent the morning breaching the fencing at their place in Andover. After a minute of talk, she rolled on.

The first crew member I met was that day’s flagger, William Bolling, who moved to Rumford from Vincennes, Ind., not long ago. “My fiancée wanted to come home.”

Since the Martin Road work began, there has been some dramatic weather. William said, “It’s miserable out here when you have to deal with heavy rain and humidity and bugs.”

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The Perennial Inn – once the Martin Farm – sits almost exactly half way between the Route 2 and Andover Road ends of Jed Martin Road. On Aug. 5, a pluperfect Sunday afternoon, some 80 people gathered there to celebrate the Mahoosuc Land Trust’s purchase of 700 acres of Rumford Whitecap Mountain.

All of us proud to have been a part of the years-long effort, all of us applauded the outstanding efforts of Andover’s Bob and Lida Iles, who chaired the Whitecap committee and the 800 individuals and organizations who made the purchase possible.

Everyone at the party smiled up at Whitecap rising up beyond the fields and trees to the north. One and all, I hope, delighted in the coming together of people from up and down our valley: the Lovejoys from Rumford, the Bretons, Pat Hopkins, too; the Stowells and Vogts and Hatches from Bethel; the Wights – Steve is the trust’s board chairman – and Andrews from Newry; Herb and Dot Adams and Jo Everett from Hanover; Andover’s Leon Akers; and Rene Parsons from right across Jed Martin Road. It doesn’t get better than that.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives in Rumford with her husband, Jim. She is a freelance writer and author of Rumford Stories. Contact her: [email protected]