“My road is dirt and gravel and ruts and prayers, it’s terrifying in the winter and so beautiful your heart hurts in the fullness of summer.”

I wrote those words for a digital essay I did about my house.

The same road I hate in the winter, I love this time of year — particularly early mornings when the mist is still settled in the lowlands and the tall grasses sparkle in the light of rising sun. Inevitably, there will be deer with their fawns. I forget that deer are not a daily occurrence for all folks. Beautiful creatures and the little ones too make your heart hurt with their youth and beauty. There are rabbits and I can hear the peepers in the pond. If I’m lucky, the flock of wild turkey will make an appearance. They are so ugly they are beautiful – especially the Old Tom who has lived a pugilistic life to keep his harem. He struts with pride and the ladies and their young’uns follow.

I live in a forest and the road up here used to be a path to the McComas Farm which is still behind me though they don’t farm any longer. The back pasture has been allowed to grow wild. I miss walking up there and collecting walnuts, but the neighbor tells me there is black bear up there now.

I don’t want to surprise a bear.

The deer eat my roses but leave the irises that came from my great-grandmother’s garden. They are all mostly yellow now, the purple ones losing to the dominant genes of the yellow. But the Creator gifts me with a purple one now and again. My yard is being taken over by autumn olive which is an invasive shrub/tree that is colonizing the United States. They want us to eradicate it as it is pushing out the native plants, but it’s attractive and the fragrance when it blooms is sweeter than honeysuckle. I often think that what my yard smells like when it’s in bloom is what Narnia smelled like. Not Turkish Delight.

I walk down the road to my mom’s house. It’s a good morning to be alive. Morning coffee on her deck watching the sun come up over the ridge, in the silence of the forest, there are beautiful sounds and I want to hear them all. And so I am quiet.

This road is dirt and gravel and ruts and prayers. It is terrifying in the winter and so beautiful your heart hurts in the fullness of summer.