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I love gravel
roads-narrow ones with lots of dust and bends. They are not
always the best paths for travel as in the winter the twists
in the road often fill with snow, making the roads unusable.
But oh, in the spring, summer and fall a gravel road is a
place to wander. Every day on such a road dances a new
dance. A gravel road is a special place. A place to be
without company. There is a quiet happiness to be found in
periodic reflections. A time to think and to be grateful. I
was a regular walker of gravel roads almost as soon as I had
learned to walk. Sometimes I would walk at a slow and
deliberate pace. At other times I would run in most haste. A
gravel road was a place that was easy for me to get along
with. A comfortable spot where my imagination had no
boundaries. A place where I could laugh loudly over nothing.
A location where I could be unseen by anything other than
the hawk flying overhead and the deer hiding in the tall
grass.
True,
the road could be hot and dusty in the summer, but that made
me appreciate the gentle breezes it occasionally provided
all the more. I would sample the raspberries that fruited
for my pleasure. I would smell the delightful aromas offered
by the wet soil following a rain and freshly mowed hay. My
eyes were well fed by the beauty of the wildflowers that
grew among the thin, young saplings bordering the road. The
young trees had fled to the open spaces offered by the road
ditch. Trees do not grow well in the shadow of their
parents. They grow tall away from home. Often, a car would
stop. I would decline the kind offer of a ride. "Why walk
when you could ride?" I'd be asked. What I was doing was so
much more than walking. I was enjoying life.
I still walk gravel roads. I still hear nature's softest
voice as the breeze blows through the wind-catching hedge of
small trees and grasses. Why walk when I could ride? We all
leave our signature upon the land. Mine will be footprints
in the dusty crown of a gravel road. I walk instead of
riding because walking a gravel road is one joy I do not
want to disappear from my life.
Al Batt
Hartland, MN 56042
SnoEowl @ aol.com
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