Down in the Hollow

Sometimes, when I drive home at the end of the school day, I avoid the interstate and take one of several long ways. Today, I did that.

I crossed under I-24 along Highway 64 and turned right on old Highway 41/The Murfreesboro Highway to drive alongside lazy cows and spiky purple wild flowers and free-range chickens and sleeping ducks beside a small pond and munching goats and beautiful rolling fields and hills. Even the names of the side roads and lanes are musical and soothing: Dexter Bush Lane, McBride Branch Road, Daniel Swope Lane, Worthington Lane, French Brantley Road, Huffman Hollow Road,and my favorite, Tillman Hollow Lane, where I stopped to take my rainy-day photograph. Along my route is the little crossing called Noah, where a newly built white Church of Christ sits across from an old general store, where I think someone lives now. Just a bit further down the road, Jo Jo's Java sports a wind turbine that grinds the Bongo Java beans.

Although my commute is long and difficult and tiring, the land and the things it sprouts never cease to calm me. It's my passing painting of green.