The black and grey macadam scar, yellow-lined on the sides and white dashed down the middle, winds its way through the glade along the river between two small towns on the western slope of the mountains.
It has been there for as long as I can remember.
Once it was a segment of the main road connecting the metropolitan western valley with the high desert plateau on the eastern side of the mountains. Now it is a meander, cut off from the faster, sleeker highway on the other side of the river. It serves only the local folk of the two villages as they travel back and forth in search of food, love, and life.
Fir and Hemlock trees tower over the glade on the uphill side and from the lower side, nearer the river, bright green Broad-Leaf Maple and Western Red Cedar mingle with Bracken Ferns and moss covered boulders. Tall patches of grass crowd the edges and protrusions of green push their way brusquely up through the cracking asphalt, and deep, deep in the very heart of the glade, the branches of the trees bend inward to form the arch of an ancient, timeless cathedral.
And if you enter quietly by foot on a cool, wet, winter morning, or on a late sun-dappled evening in the summer, and you are respectful, and you listen carefully, you can hear, under the breath of the breeze or the drip of the rain, the murmur of the earth counseling the glade:
“Patience, patience. There is time.”
Marv Himmel
January, 2006 ©