A Trip to a Safe (and wonderful) Place #1

When I was in the fifth grade Mrs Carasco gave us a wonderful assignment. Simple and to the point. Write a story telling about your life as a grown up. Your home, your family, your life. Who do you want to be when you grow up? How do you want to live?



I have long since lost track of the paper and I don't recall the words but I do remember the time and place I looked ahead in my memory and wrote about. I still remember that place and try to get back there to visit whenever I can. As I have recently spent time taking apart my dreams and memories and all those things that make me who I am and who I am becoming I have found myself wanting so much to go back to that place I have yet to create in the world where I spend most of my time.



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We have been driving for a bit now, out of the city, the noise, the traffic. We left the city and a few minutes ago we passed through the small town we have come to think of as home. There are a couple easy restaurants and stores and a dusty parking lot in front of the sherrifs office. The few people on the street smile, shading their eyes as they look and then recognizing us they wave and their smiles spread wide across their faces. These are our friends and our neighbors and it feels good to know and be known. A nice little town but not so nice as to be a destination for the traveling public. On the main street there is a hardware and feed store, a couple gas stations, a friendly tavern with cold beer, good food, and room for the kids, a small grocery, a Mexican Restaurant with a great patio, and a dry goods store and office supply. Professional offices, such as they are, are gathered at the end of the main street. Good simple strong people in a good strong simple town. Not much pretense here. In just a very few minutes we pass through the town and cross the little river on the concrete bridge and then we are back in the country.

Time passes nicely here. We have time to laugh and talk and then settle into the nice silence of friends who know without words how the other is appreciating the wonderful world we are passing through.

Do you see the drive there? Just ahead on the right? It curves around a large old tree, up the hill and dissappears over the crest. There is a fence along the road and the drive enters the property through a wide gate with a cattle-guard. The gate is open, in fact it nearly always is and beside the stone gateposts is a large mailbox. Once through the fence and off the road the drive has wide gentle shoulders and is not fenced; grazing animals can cross the drive at will.


We are driving a pickup truck and the windows are open. The weather is warm and dry and as we cross onto the property we slow to allow a couple of steers to move off the road and out of our way. Did you hear the rumble of the cattle guard as we crossed it? The sound carries across the valley and up the hill ahead of us. Dust billows up behind us and the smell of the fields and the animals drifts in the windows as we crest the hill and look across the valley at our home. . .
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TBContinued and modified soon!