One of the fun things my wife and I loved to do was take the next road off to the left or to the right, the three criteria being that the road was (a) a country road; and that (b) we had enough gas to get to wherever the road was leading, and back; and (c) we had packed a picnic lunch.
We were simply happy being together, going wherever.
All of our 50 years of married life we lived in the slow lane, like a two-lane backroad, one lane each direction.
Never straight, at least not for very long, the roads we traveled undulated through the hills, twisted along with the bends in the river, led to discoveries we’d never have had, had we been in a hurry.
What fun adventures we had!
The picturesque old barn with sunlight filtering through the slats, hay strewn about with a pitchfork nearby, and through the opening looking down over the pasture, cows grazing about, the distance in haze as the day faded into dusk.
With the rustic backdrop of a tractor, coated with a yellow-brown patina, which looked to have arrived at its final resting place before a weathered barn, and beyond that a white-picket fence enclosing a small cottage, a young girl sat upon a swing, oblivious to us watching as we rolled to a stop.
Bending her knees followed by stretching her legs, her long black curls unruly as she swooshed back and forth, she reached yet higher and higher, the branch of the old oak tree easily bearing her tiny frame.
The swirl of sunlit leaves and blue sky seem captured in a face of sheer joy.
Such were the fairytale moments in a whimsical place along a slow country road.
And so it was that as I headed yet again toward the mountains, dirt road turnoffs eventually leading me to the one-hundred miles of trails I would backpack this summer in her memory, I was watching closely the numbers on the odometer as they rolled toward the 200,000 milestone.
At exactly the moment that that significant measurement of distance traveled occurred, I pulled to a stop before the sign that announced I would soon be finding the road leading me to yet another adventure in the wilderness.
I smiled at the wedding band my wife herself had made for me and slipped on my finger a half-century ago.
I remember closing the car door on my hand one day and hollering out, more from shock because I wasn’t hurt, I looked at the ring that withstood the worst of the impact and that has forever thereafter remained bent with no possible way ever since that it’ll come off.
Then, and at the side of this road, and all summer long, so many fairytale moments in magical places.
