Monday, July 13, 2009

The Unpaved Road


This used to be a dirt road. Boone, like Daniel Boone, the pioneer woodsman. There was a beaver dam across this creek and we would test the winter ice on the resulting pond, creeping towards the non-square, non-regular structure that the beavers had built. Now it is an unobstructed creek in a contained woods. It used to be wild. Now, we can cross wheelchair accessible, wooden foot bridges over the water, where once we used to show our prowess by balancing across it on any fallen tree we happened to find.

The hill where I went tobogganing now has a concrete water reservoir capping it's top. The Home Depot stands where the next hill used to be. Forty years later, I squint to remember the outlines of untamed land that used to be there, before the interstate freeway began to flow by with its unending sound of rubber on concrete.

One day, back when it was wilder, as I walked that unpaved road, a butterfly landed on my finger. I was in college then. Battered by the realities of the sexual revolution. Blue jeans. Braless. Tired from too many psychedelics. Long, untamed hair. Still-- the innocent butterfly landed on my finger. She delicately licked my skin, barely a tickle from her proboscis tongue. She found some kind of nectar in me, some sweet flower of possibility, and she stayed for many precious minutes. We fed each other there, in the quiet, wild world of Boone.

--by Terra Rafael

1 comment:

Ana said...

Beautiful!