I have a long drive to work. I really do enjoy it though...it is 45 minutes of solitude in the morning when I can watch the world wake up around me, and as the school year progresses see the sun rise over the farm fields. In the afternoon I can turn the radio up and let the day's stress melt away as I edge my way home, again passing through the fields in the afternoon light. I choose to take the country roads over the highways, uncrowded and uncongested byways where the most traffic comes during harvest and planting times. My commute has become almost a meditation of sorts, a part of my day that is as essential to me as breathing in and out. I honestly look forward to that time, and don't know what I would do without it. Of course, there are mornings when the fog is so thick I can't see the bumper in front of me, or in January and the drifts put a skim of ice all over the place and those ditches on either side of me loom deep and dark; yet I still would not trade the drive I have through the cornfields of Northwest Ohio for all the highways, bridges, tunnels, subways, trains, or taxis of the world. So, give me the flat, "in the middle of nowhere" farmland I've grown to love; I can't imagine going back to the hills and forests of my childhood anymore!
