I'd noticed the stakes along the road, and even blue and orange dots painted on trees as I walked along Willow Valley Road from my property up to the NID ditch that I walked every day.

Then the certified letter arrived in the mail on Monday, April 28. I had to sign twice for it, and everyone at the Nevada City Post Office was curious what it was about. Maybe it was some good news. It wasn't.

It read: "This letter is to inform you that construction to widen Willow Valley Road will commence within the next ten (10) days. The area of your property is within the county's Right of Way. The existing wire fence will be removed and the trees cut down to facilitate the widening of the road."

It was signed by the developer who needed the road widened for his development, no phone number. His name was unlisted in the phone book.

Alarmed, I called the engineering company, whose number he did give me and the county, which he also recommended. I managed to find out that they were planning to cut down 38 trees along my property line, about a half-mile along Willow Valley Road.

I couldn't believe it. I walked along the road, now paying close attention to each one of those 38 trees, some with marks on them. A huge madrone, many old cedars, 100 foot pines, an old walnut tree, many smaller trees. I started to cry, trying to imagine Willow Valley Road without those trees.

I have lived on that same stretch of road for 13 years. Ironically, I have always told people to watch for the 'Road Narrows' sign to find my place. Now, the road was to be widened. The Road Narrows sign would be gone, along with the trees along my stretch of road and countless others farther up the road.

I was told that I had no rights to stop the cutting of the trees because the county has the right of way. The former owner had given it to them years ago. When I bought the property, I assumed that the fence along Willow Valley Road was my property line. Well, it wasn't.

Cutting down those trees will totally alter my property. I will have no buffer against the noise and dust of the road, no privacy. But it will affect much more than just my piece of land. It will change the aesthetic feeling of the road from a narrow quaint country road to a wide, bare thoroughfare.

Many of us walk and bike that road daily. We enjoy the narrow road and the quiet, peace and presence the trees provide. We don't want to walk down a road in Roseville. We want to walk down Willow Valley Road, narrow Willow Valley Road.

In the frantic calls I made to try to find out information, one official person I spoke to said: "In two weeks, you won't even know it happened." I stopped him and said, "Excuse me? You think that I won't even know this happened in two weeks? I will notice that those trees are gone every single day. I will never stop noticing that those trees are gone." I don't think he believed me.

I'm writing this because this is not just about Willow Valley Road and my property line. This is about the future of our county. I wrote the Nevada County/Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce Directory in 2002, and in the research I did to write all the articles for that publication, I found out that the No. 1 reason people come to this county is "Rural Quality of Life."

But if we keep cutting down old trees and paving them over, it will be gone, road by road, tree by tree.

These problems raise the issues about "property rights" and how the behaviors of those around us affect our property rights. We can't technically stop them, but they can change our quality of life and affect not only our property values, but they can also destroy the very qualities we chose when we bought the property - the aesthetics of the area and neighborhood.

I don't know if I can do anything to alter the county's plans to take down all those trees to further the development up the road. I do know that I felt like a cog in a wheel, and the words "the land of the free" feel a little less free to me. And for that I am very sad.

Diane Covington is a resident of Nevada City.