Maybe that it was going to be a long three months, maybe that I was already missing The Bob- who had helped me drive from North Carolina to New Hampshire and who I had just dropped off at the Manchester airport.
Maybe that I was in love.
I have since driven it so many times that I hardly give it even a cursory thought. I could drive it with my eyes closed, I know the sway, ebb, and flow of the asphalt so well.
Today I drove it again, for what felt like the millionth time this year. And as I watched the road happen, the drive pass... I was struck by what it must have been like that first drive and what it is like now. How what started as a passing fling has grown into an enduring affair.
This road is part of my life here, my lifeblood.
I was struck by how much of what I have witnessed and witness here has become inherent to me. There is something of my heart in each now-yellowing, now redding, now browning leaf. There is a thought, a hope a wish, around every turn of that road. I have buried secrets in the soil here. I have cried myself to sleep here, squinting through the tears to find the Milky Way flowing just outside of my window, just outside of reach.
The sunrise and sunset, midday heat, early morning cold. The river, the mountains. The animals, the earth, the people. Spring, Summer, Fall…
Over and over again this place has captured and held me captive- without my ever realizing it. Until, that is, days like today when the last warmth of Indian summer mixes with the growing gold of impending fall.
And everything I have ever given of myself is given back tenfold. I forget until I don't.
Until next time, I if I could give you this space, I would..
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