To the editor:

Everyone enjoys the drive and walking on George Street. Open land, farming, horses and nature. Everything is there for the young and the old to get "unplugged." The neighborhood is pitch black at night. All you hear are packs of coyotes howling.

We have no cable or internet.

Then there is winter. It is a whole new world. Open land with the rain and snow getting blown across the roads. We get flooding that blocks the road. The road is very narrow, so when the snow builds up, it becomes a tight one lane. George Street is partly in Massachusetts. They plow at different times. My farm is 1/2 mile from my home. We have a plow truck to get back and forth. The town can plow and 15 minutes later the drifting has blocked the road. The big snow that happened four to five years ago buried our truck and the town's big plow truck. They had to send a payloader to get their truck out. I had to call my neighbor with his backhoe to pull us out. My neighbor would bring me back and forth to the barn. I was not getting down the road.

A house last summer caught fire a stone's throw away from Nockum Hill. It was gone in 10 minutes. Twenty-two houses would not stand a chance. Fire department seven miles away. No town water.

Farming has been on George Street for over two hundred years. Tractors have to go slow. It is hard to watch cars passing into oncoming traffic.

I have been here for forty one years and have tried to accept all the changes. This piece of land has valuable history and endangered turtles and is where Tribbie Chafee lost her life in a horse accident. Building houses seems like the last straw.

We need to save what is left. To me this is Barrington's Yellow Stone National Park.

Lauren Clegg

Barrington