Roads become wondrous things as they transport us across empty places
and land us smack dab in the middle of somewhere. While freeways can't be beat for getting us across town or to the airport on time, there is no substitute for traveling the backroads when it comes to peace and beauty. Springtime in Texas is the greatest time for "Sunday drives" no matter on what day they take place. Wild flowers seem to bloom around every curve in the road and their beauty brings comfort to a receptive heart. I know the names of every one! There are the little yellow ones with wide petals, the purple ones that look like tiny cups, the magnificent red ones that tower over all the others and of course the official Texas state flower, the Bluebonnet!
God love 'em all! And God loves us, or else why would he show us such natural beauty? I try my best to hibernate through the winter months, performing any necessary activities in slow motion, refusing to leave the farm except in emergencies like searches for food, and never ever going out after dark-thirty.
Wintertime is the time to sit close to the wood stove and curl up my toes with a book that I would never ever possibly find the time to read if the weather was warm. The cold months make us appreciate the really warm temperatures that we get in March and April when we can stretch and shed those heavy winter duds that drag us down.
My body responds to springtime and warmer weather like a flower slowly unfolding and smiling at the sun. The aches and pains that plagued me all through December, January, and February vanish with the first notes of a mockingbird and the sight of the tiny hummingbirds that come every year on the 24th of March. Right after the regular routine of mixing sugar water for the birds begins the day, we take off to explore roads we already know, to see flowers and grasses and rock fences and limestone houses, rusted farm machinery and little country stores with Mobil signs stuck to their rotting wooden sides. We drive and drive down dirt roads, dust trailing after us, until we find that place that still has cold drinks chilling in a box of ice water. While we down an ice cold Dr. Pepper, we study the picture calendars on the wall and slowly, ever so slowly, the tension of daily living just slip slides away and we focus our eyes on the little purple flowers blooming in that patch just at the corner before you turn up toward the main road.
Sometime deep in the past, way back when I was a kid riding a tricycle around and around the hard dirt yard that lay beyond the white picket fence and my mother's chrysanthemums, there was a place where there were no problems, only utter peace. In that time and place the sun always shown, flowers always bloomed, and promises were never broken. In childhood we ride trails of dreams and roads that take us to a wonderland where aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers give us hugs and kisses and tell us that everything will be all right. Our mothers and fathers have already told us this but we need to be told and retold again and again. Flowers line the path to comfort so we follow, remembering those times when we snatched wild flowers from the hard earth to offer at arm's length to a parent as a symbol of love.
The roads we travel and the flowers we gather become our lives and the story is what we leave behind. May all your roads be downhill and all your flowers smell as lilac. It's springtime. Be happy.
