Red & White Flags
Every week I go by a construction site on the way to Tsu Tsu where they’re expanding the road into the mountain under Uchiyama pass. Over the course of a year I’ve seen the crease of the road dig deeper into the side of mountain face.
There might be another tunnel made in this half-moon stretch. An airy bay amongst the trees that overlook Oura beach far below.
I wonder if it’ll be finished before I leave.
Whether the giant steel barrier that reaches thirty-forty feet into the air protecting the workers as they place new gray cement blocks to secure the mountain face. I wonder if that will come down before I leave. I wonder if I’ll bid goodbye to the geriatric road workers waving alternating white and red flags.
I wonder where on the island they’ll go next on this never ending quest of redoing the roads.
I doubt it will be the western side of the island. I’d drive for hours through the old (and sometimes new) roads without ever coming across another person.
Hard to imagine on an island that doesn’t possess a width wider than eight miles at any point.
But somehow in the stretched out, vast deposits of connected islands in this actual archipelago, there is nearly three hundred square miles.
Most of it is forest, but the rest? That’s the roadwork.