Reflections on the drive to work

I take the back roads to work instead of taking the highway. There is a place where, in the spring, a dogwood blooms in front of a larger dark purple lilac and the different bloom times just barely overlap. The beauty makes me catch my breath. I know the three places where I need to slow down because people in those areas keep guinea fowl and the birds tend to congregate by the side of the road as though waiting for the school bus. Another spot goes nearly unnoticed unless there is snow to highlight the evergreens surrounding a very deep red barn. Winding curves and straight stretches with trees touching overhead to form long tunnels. I'm on nodding acquaintance with people walking their dogs and with the goats, sheep and miniature horses. I keep a wary watch for the deer. Just like a relative who's had a few too many at the family reunion, the deer are equally likely to stare glassy-eyed as you pass as they are to stumble into you.

I pass through several very small towns one of which has hand-drawn "Welcome, Hurst Family Market" signs in windows and on an easel at the corner near the library. The nearest grocery store had been nearly twenty miles away. The towns all have holiday banners that go up on the street lights the week before Thanksgiving and flowers in enormous pots along the sidewalks that stay tended all summer.

And then, yesterday, I turned a corner out in the country on my drive to work and a yellow and black bi-plane crossed before me barely clearing the power lines. Then the cowboy flying it banked the plane into a steep turn almost straight up and flew back across the road, then lower and lower until he skimmed the field and began dusting the crops. Wow.

I take the back roads to work instead of taking the highway.