dirt roads home...

The dirt road that led to the old farm house where we lived seemed long, especially when I was carrying my school books in those long ago days before the invention of the backpack for children. It was sandy with high ditch banks covered in poke weed, dog hobble, blackberry briars with pine trees for exclamation points. Twice a day during the school year Gayle and I would walk the dirt road to the main paved road to meet the bus, driven by Mr. Woods, and go to school where the education came packaged in books and people, then come home driving on more dirt roads. Walking this little dirt road gave me another education. In the winter mornings the sandy dirt would crunch underfoot making a satisfying sound. My mama would be calling after me to put my coat on but I wasn’t cold. I was full of fire and warm from the inside out. We didn’t usually have time to dally in the mornings so our walk would be quick and with purpose. But oh those afternoons when nothing urgent waited at the end of the road... I would walk slowly, surveying the kingdom laid out before me... pokeberries to make ink (or dye), doodlebugs, snake tracks and once a rattlesnake coiled and rattling, neighbors friendly dogs, wild weed flowers for the picking and at the end of the road, just past the curve, home waited. An old high roofed, front porched, tin roofed, creaky old house with an enclosed dog trot hall where those who loved me most waited for me. I still walk that road in my memory.
My grandparents home, Cloverly, was at the end of a long, straight dirt road that turned off the narrow paved road between St. Stephens, Bruington and Walkerton in King and Queen County in Virginia. Gayle and I would be sitting in the back seat of the car so full of anticipation and joy we quivered. As we turned up the dirt road, corn or soybeans planted in the fields on each side, we could see Grandma and Grandaddy standing in front of the day lilly bank waiting. Sis Sue up the road must have called them to tell them we were near. Grandma in her house dress, hair pulled back in a knot on her neck, Grandaddy in his work khakis and white hair combed just so, waiting and watching as the car moved slowly up the lane to park under the tall trees. Gayle and I would fly out of the car running to meet our starchy German funny Grandma and tender smiling Grandaddy. The old moss covered bumpy brick walk to the house under the shade of tall trees stopped at the porch step. The two story, flat roofed, gray with green shutters, pre-Civil War house was waiting for us, full of ghosts and stories and laughter and cousins, a stair bannister with a curve for sliding, iron beds for sleeping, an old wooden Chinese Checker board in the downstairs hall tree and a bookcase full of turn of the century novels. It was my first glimpse of the joy of heaven.
The dirt road that leads to Sabbath Rest Farm is rocky and bumpy, covered in gravel, dappled with sunlight and shade.. It winds up through a cut that is high on one side covered in ferns, mosses and wild flowers and drops off to a picture perfect mountain stream on the other. As the road levels out, I pass the Dedrick Cutshall Memorial Shed , named for a dear neighbor who died. He and his wife Pat lived at the entrance to the farm and worked the farm when the Roberts owned it. From Pat and Dedrick we heard the stories of tobacco growing, hay baling, the tornado that took half of a barn away, roller skating in the chicken house and falling through the rickety floor and the Texas bought bull that broke his leg on a mountain rock.
The old barn door sign crafted in barbed wire names the place. At the gate to the farm, animal mailboxes stand guard, a pig, cat, rooster and cow. The road runs under a tall, beautiful pine tree past the original farmhouse, past the turn off to mama’s home, past the log barn chapel and pond, past the leaning barn (so named because it does lean a little) and begins climbing once again. We are in the wide open now with gentle hills on either side, bathed in light. The road forks with the right fork leading to Tim and Jeannie’s home. Bearing to the left, I top the hill and see rolling hills, mountains and the homes of neighbors in the distance on my right. To the left is an old fence, a pasture, an old barn and a beautiful old tree with branches spread in welcome. Our new/old white farmhouse with porches and an althea bush from Cloverly, waits in welcome.
Seasons and weather matter on this road. Winter snows and frost make the passage slippery in the shady stretches. One must drive and walk carefully to avoid going where you do not intend. Rain washes ruts and tracks in the gravel and dirt. Tim takes the tractor and uses the blade to level it again. Summer heat and drought are marked by clouds of dust rising in rooster tail plumes as we drive up the hill. Spring and summer and fall bring flowers... bloodroot, asters, chicory, black eyed Susans, wild phlox, naturalized iris and daffodils, hillsides covered in Queen Anne’s Lace, wild geraniums, witch hazel, blackberry and wild rose and honeysuckle. And winter shows us the true shape of the land when the green has fallen away.
For all of the inconvenience of living on a road that you must maintain, a road that spits dust at you, a road that slips and slides in the winter, a road that rises up to meet you on one side and falls away on the other, there is a soul connection to this road. It is not an anonymous black ribbon maintained by strangers. It is my road, a road that leads home. A road, that like my life, has sunlight and shadow, slick dangerous passages and firm footing, smooth stretches and bumpy spots, narrow blind curves and broad spacious spaces.
Blind Bartimaeus sitting by the dirt roadside, called out as he heard Jesus passing by. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" As I drive the dirt roads of my life in memory and in the present, I, like Bartimaeus, call out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David. Remember me in my times of trouble and my times of ease. Take pity on my human condition. Like the blind man, let my faith make me whole. Do not leave me untouched, unhealed, unheard. I do not ask for a straight and level road, only for the light and love and grace necessary for this day’s journey. Hear me, Lord and answer me this day."