Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Country Road

I took a long drive today after we picked C up from preschool. I set the car to go due east and we drove and drove. The weather was so nice, I wanted to go outside and wander around by a lake for a while, and then stop and have a picnic (maybe Colin Firth would be there? LOL) but the weather, while slightly crisp at only 89 and slightly drier than usual, was just a little too hot for any sustained trekking otuside, especially with two little bitty kids on the verge of naptime. So I thought, why not take a drive, with no object but to drive?

I went to Monticello. It was beautiful. The road there is lined by white fences (really) and bucolic little green fields of livestock and shiny grasses. The sky was blue and the clouds were puffy. Along the way I remembered a trip to a u-pick strawberry farm from Spring last year, and I remembered a girl I used to be friends with who lived out that way, who I would spend hours with on the weekends, going to this or that play, watching intellectual movies, and deciding which old British actor we would marry when we grew up, which ended up happening a little too quickly. I remembered a drive I took during my Freshman year of college with a friend of mine to take pictures, how beautifully blue and sunny that day was, too, how shiny and new my SLR was, how deliciously empty the days of Christmas break at 19 years old.

The kids were mercifully quiet. The only sound was the wind, and the car, a ghastly but necessary but wonderful SUV, so big and roomy and apparently good for napping. Quiet baby snores from the backseat.

I got all the way to the courthouse in Monticello, drove around the roundabout, and then headed back toward home. It was almost like meditating, almost like a retreat. It reminded me that fall is not far away -- the cooling crisp season that I wait for all year.

1 comment:

  1. That sounds so nice. I drove to Thomasville on Saturday for a Take Your Kids Outside nature walk. The drive was so lovely. Need to do it again. Now if it wasn't for the gas...

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