I drive down country roads, far from scheduled time and harried people. The road, bordered by 3-strand barbed wire fence that defines pasture and contains the placid cattle that walk the same cow path that their predecessors walked, barn to pasture, pasture to barn. These trails, so worn that they are permanently cut into the grassy hillsides, never to be strayed from, a network of repetition. I look at them as I maneuver through hills and curves, careful to remain on my own trail.
I think of all the trails of my life. Each one a road to a heart’s destination, or an idea. All of them trails to the experiences that define one’s life. Trails that were smooth as glass, and trails that tested my resolve and my vehicles suspension. Many of them repeated enough to become automatic, paired with a memory of love or pleasure; or pain.
Some of them creative and some; self-destructive. Even now remembered long after their power over me has gone. Most of them forgotten in consciousness but with the imprint of the lesson they taught written on my soul. I could return to most of them today, those roads of memory. I could repeat the curves and turns and remember the landmarks that have changed over time, but the lesson that was there, and the impact of the time; has passed.
I drive down long country lanes and look ahead to where it disappears over the next hill, on its way to the horizon.
