I spent the day with my parents yesterday. Usually, I jump onto the interstate highway and zoom down to maximize the time I have to spend with them. We share lunch, run errands together, work on maintenance issues, and end the visit with a long talk about family history. Then, I blaze my way through town back to interstate and zip back to Franklin.
Yesterday was different, though, because I offered to give one of their friends a ride home. Though her path ran close to my own path, this divergence from my 20-year routine caused me to consider following a different route home. I had forgotten how much I love the vistas of my homeland until I set aside my haste to return to my routine and instead chose to live in that moment. I determined to follow the backroads home -- not just the major highways that have served as swift conveyance for the generations of automobiles these past 100 years. No, I decided to follow the county roads, the old roads, the paths that hug along the various creeks and branches, that climb up and creep along the top of the ridges of the hills and then plummet into the valleys. It was a heaven-sent decision.
In my opinion, Middle Tennessee is blessed with some of the most beautiful geography on this earth. I often comment that the earliest settlers from Europe felt right at home as this land looks so much like the rolling hills of Scotland and Ireland. Yesterday, I hugged the Pigeon Roost Creek and indulged in the cool relief there from the extreme heat that rolled along the valleys. I climbed from these hollows to the ridges where the viewsheds caught my breath and forced me to pull off the road and admire. Miles and miles of rolling hills embracing verdant valleys, tinged with the haze of summer heat. The colors of those valleys ran from the deep green of those covered in acres of growing corn to the burnished gold of hay fields ready for cutting and back to the green of fields dotted with newly-rolled hay bales. If only the great French Impressionists had seen Middle Tennessee, they would have forgone France. I passed farm after farm where the horses ran across the green meadows, where the cows grazed along the cool creek banks, where the pigs slumbered in the shaded mudflats. The decision to take the slow road was one of my best decisions in ages.
Bishop Kallistos Ware spends a meaty chapter in his work The Orthodox Way encouraging his readers to look to the beauty of nature to catch a glimpse of its Creator. Yesterday, I caught more than a glimpse -- I was overwhelmed by the works of the hand of the Creator, who reminded me to slow down, breathe, and enjoy the beauty of the world that lies just off the routine path.
*Airmont Hay Bales Morning Painting by Timothy Chambers
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