Roads

A few weeks ago I was driving down a back road on one of the islands near Beaufort.  I was really enjoying it.  The live oaks arching over the road.  The calm green and soft gray colors.  That marvelous tunnel effect.  I was thinking that this was the perfect atmosphere to drive through and just to be in.

Then I remembered that almost exactly a year ago I was driving on roads in Oklahoma and Arizona and New Mexico and thinking much the same thing but with different detail.  I was loving the openness of it.  The fact that the horizon was a thing of the far distance.  The beiges and golds and immense sky.  The Sangre de Christos at the edge.  The exhilarating, freeing feeling that you could indeed see forever.

How different.  And how wonderful it is that two things so different could make me feel great in different ways.

But I wasn't expecting much when I set out to drive from Beaufort to Chicago.  I was surprised.  I don't have any idea who's doing the planting but someone has done a huge job.  For so many miles along my way there were the whites of dogwoods in bloom and the purples of redbud trees.  Every time I thought it was over, another clump showed up.  At first I thought they were simply wild growth but there was too much of it and it was too orderly.  Not organized or landscaped but just too consistent to be Nature I think.  And much more than I was expecting from an Interstate.

So to whoever is responsible for this program, "Thank you."  It's the best project I've seen since Christo's gates in Central Park.  And it reminds me that roads in and of themselves are a great thing and I need to keep moving because there are so many new and different ones to find and explore.