Life in the Country
“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” This quote compelled me to write about my life on a dirt road in the California countryside.
When you live in the country on a dirt road you will never have a clean car. You will wash it to no avail, as the thick clouds of dust created when you drive on the road will quickly cover your vehicle in a fine gray layer. The dust will waft from the road into your house each time you open a window or door, so that your house can never be kept clean either, no matter how much you dust and sweep.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, you will dread the heavy rains, because you know it will mean a dance with death as you navigate your vehicle along the long slippery stretch hoping you don’t slide into the cliff wall, or worse yet, skid over the other side that plunges seventy-five feet below.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, you learn to watch for sinkholes in the road that start as big around as a man’s arm and suddenly become large enough to swallow your car. You will pass dozens of black cattle peppering the hillside and filling the silence with their gentle mooing. Sometimes one will squeeze through the fence and you will spot it trotting nonchalantly along the road until the ranch hands catch it and return it to the fenced in pasture.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, sometimes you will see a roadrunner darting quickly across or a tarantula crawling slowly along. You will learn the difference between rattlesnakes and bull snakes and learn to set the good black and white striped king snakes free when they become trapped in your garden’s protective netting. You will learn to recognize the ubiquitous poison oak and to avoid touching it lest you break out in the familiar horrible, itchy rash.
When you live in the country on a dirt road you will find that you can’t leave your chickens out past supper time or the Bobcats will get them. You will watch a team of wild pigs running fast near the creek in the quiet dusky evenings. You will hear a pack of coyotes howling just over the hill. You will lie on your back in the night and see every distant star in the galaxy and make a wish on one. You will see the Milky Way floating distantly like an ethereal plate and think about how tiny and inconspicuous you really are.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, it is almost two miles to your mailbox, but if you walk to it, you have time to notice the wildflowers: purple lupines, orange sticky monkey flowers, pink shooting stars. You will smell the fresh scent of eucalyptus after the rain. You will see blue jays, magpies and doves sitting on fence posts, quail scuttling along the road, and hawks and vultures swooping and circling rhythmically in the air. And sometimes you will see the hoof prints of deer, and then those of a mountain lion, and then both sets of prints will disappear.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, you wave at everyone you see walking by, and you smile because people are friendly and so are you. Sometimes you stop to chat with a neighbor who lives further down the road. And sometimes you see people you have hiked with in the past, and they will invite you to share a bottle of wine.
When you live in the country on a dirt road, life is good and it is simple. And sometimes, that is all you need.
