road trips

On road trips, I barely see what's outside my window, unless Honey says -- look't that! or gasps (usually at old cars, old trucks, old tractors, cool busses and especially Willies Jeeps). Usually, I got my half dozen books and pens and notebooks, or... if the transit is right, my knitting or a small loom and some handspun. With the knitting, I get to see where we're going, as that doesn't take concentration.


Yesterday, we drove to Spencer, WV. Any road you take in curls around hillsides like a hyperactive snake. Honey is saying more "damns" than wows as we hit potholes, barely miss approaching traffic coming around one of those turns on our side of the narrow road, or swerve around a vagabond woodscat.

I had my usual armload of books, jotting down notes as I storyfind for a friend, finding the cycles of life that bring us around more turns than this road to Spencer. But my heart isn't in it today. I start looking out the window and the sights are part beauty, part heart-lonesome. I wonder about an old piece of a house where toys in the yard show me that someone still lives there. A double layer of plastic will cover those windows come winter. The child who lives there will love the curve of that hill, commune with that apple tree and survive on dreams until life takes him to whatever story he'll be writing with his life one day.

These hills nurture us. They also tend to trap us. How can we leave someone we've loved so deeply. We do, though. And sometimes we have to if we want more than double-thick plastic keeping out winter's chill. I would let my mind wander on toward the whys of how things are, but I know that no one has ever come to the figuring of that one. The best you can do is find a philosophy that keeps you going forward, around all the curves, hoping to smooth, the best you can, any sharp corners.