roadtrips.....

this is were it all started.... or very near here anyways.

as a small child i remember going for walks and riding around with my family & ending up in various rather neat spots...
like the old 76 station at the top of the hill were you could buy a strawberry crush before going to sit out on the embankment & count the cars going by on the hiway.
like the dirt road in front of my grandparents place that could take you down and around in a leisurely manner, under the birch trees whose canopies touched overhead...  past all the neighbors with their velvet-y lawns tucked back in to the woodlands, each place an oasis just glimpsed thru trees from the road...all the way down to peter's creek where you could go over the sturdy old wooden bridge that seemed so plainly constructed and so natural in it's place, all overgrown with moss, that i would lay on my stomach and try to look underneath to see what it was made of.  so close to & yet so safe from the rush of cold water hurrying away below. ready to jump up & brush off the dust and bits at the sound of an approaching car... marveling at the fact that that magic amalgam of logs, stones, dirt and wood could support the weight of a *whole car*. a whole car!

and like the steep grass covered gravel banks further up the road where the poppies bloomed. a whole hillside of them...wonderfully huge bowls of the most glowing-ly transparent red. they seemed so delicate with their crepe paper petals & hairy little buds nodding on the ends of rather long stalks.... so amazing and unlikely, such a testament to the winsomeness of life that, even then, it struck me.

and like the gravel patch were we parked and walked back  along the train tracks and over the train bridge...an adventure for my young self. we walked along, trying not to look down to the spaces in between the ties where there just wasn't anything...{risking life & limb!} to visit cousins at their cabin in the woods and eat bear stew.
like the airport road, with it's view out across the water & to the mountains beyond, where my dad & i would go and watch the planes take off & land at the local airport...the pilots learning to do "touch and go's"...the drone of mosquitos almost as loud as the planes engines droning above.... and the little creek on the way there where he pointed out a mink to me one day.

like the edges of the roads all over with horsetail grasses, their rainbow heads waving in the breeze, and the wild chamomile growing amongst the gravel & the dust...the ruts &tracks in the mud of the dirt roads that were different all the time. learning to see who or what passed through on this very same stretch of dirt....walking together and exclaiming over all our "finds"...there was a wealth of interesting-ness in the dirt & the ditches.  bottle caps from sodas i'd never tasted, little bits of shiny rock or glass and the occasional treasure find. a pocket knife. a small compact mirror, unbroken. tadpoles in a puddle. a bush of rosehips not obviously belonging to anyone in particular. fishing tackle. you never know what you might find when you strike out on the road!


yes maam...the romance of the road... the thrill of seeing something new & wonderous!
it's in my blood. :)
it's a part of my spirit.

and, since i am living the good life in the spot i'm in...and have been in,  for 10 years... roadtrips are how i find my wonderment.
my sense of awesomeness.
that feeling that eveything could really be all right in the world after all... that it's all still out there.
the flowers.
the creatures.
the sunrises and sunsets.
the rivers
the mountains.
the plains.
the family and friends.
the down vests and the campfires.
the magic.
waiting for us to come and see it.
weither it be down the block or across the country.... it's out there.

just down the road.