701 Lawn & Snow

About 701 Lawn & Snow

At four in the morning the James River valley is one long blue dark, and the only lights moving in Jamestown belong to people with plows. 701 Lawn & Snow takes that shift: drives and lots opened before the first alarm clock in the house has gone off, so the day begins as though the storm had been somebody else's trouble. Come summer the same trucks trade blades for mowers, and the work becomes weekly cutting, trimming close around steps and posts, and hauling off what the season sheds. The name is the whole state's address, and the route runs from the river bottoms up onto the flats where the wind never asks permission. A drive cleared at dawn and a lawn cut straight in July turn out to be the same thing — a small, visible kindness, delivered on time.