Macy sits back from the Missouri River bluffs, close enough that the wooded hills near Blackbird still catch the first heavy weather rolling up the valley before it reaches the flatter ground to the west, and Lovings Mow and Snow works the gravel roads through town and out toward the bluffs once the snow starts sticking. Distances between houses are real out here, so a single route can mean miles of open road between one cleared driveway and the next, cottonwood bottoms giving way to bluff timber and back again. The wind off the river bluffs carries differently than open prairie wind, swirling down through the draws instead of running flat, which means drifts pile up in places a driver wouldn't expect. Reaching the last house at the end of a long gravel stretch and leaving a clear lane behind, for however many miles it takes to reach the highway, is the whole shape of the work out here. By the time the route loops back through town, the bluffs above the river hold the kind of stillness a Nebraska winter brings to this stretch of the Missouri valley.