Saturday, September 30, 2006

Oh What a Beautiful Morning

About a month ago I took a well deserved vacation. The only destination was a visit to my son in NY and the only time line was to be back by the next Sunday.
The last day was probably the most memorable for me. Roomate B and I checked into a motel on a hill right beside the interstate. Clean and neat as a pin, it was like walking back in time to the 1950's. The furniture, the real key for the door, the signs, everything was very period.

There was a restaurant at the bottom of the hill and a gas staion but other than that we seemed to be in the middle of no where. We sat on the porch and watched deer grazing on the hillsides across the interstate. Deep in the woods was a house going up for auction the next week. Oh, to win the lottery!
B was still asleep the next morning when I decided to go for breakfast. The morning was cool and foggy as I walked to the bottom of the hill. A split rail fence bordered the drive way, the kind with two rails slid into knotches on the posts. Swaying in the gentle breeze and glistening with moisture, were spider webs attached in almost every corner where the posts met the rails. I likened it to a proud mother hanging art work on the refrigerator. This spider mother sure had a lot of children.

The restaurant had not opened so I continued my walk, deciding to see what was over the hill behind the motel. I came to a dirt road with a sign that read "Road ends in .95 miles." Seemed like the perfect distance.

Through the fog I could see a house and a barn with a dog barking in the distance. I came to another house where a peach fell right at my feet from a tree at the edge of the yard. I picked up the gift and continued down the road. There was no sound except water dripping from the leaves. The trees were huge, the canopy so dense there was no undergrowth. At the end of the road was a huge old farmhouse and barn with tractors and equipment scattered about, fields of corn, flowers everywhere. I took in all the beauty of the farm and the forest, the silence, the smells of nature and reluctantly started back.

And by the way, the peach was the best I've ever tasted.