Almost perfect

Do you remember, as a child, leaving with your family for a trip? Getting up incredibly early in the morning, putting the suitcases in the back of the car, settling in with a blanket and watching the colors come alive in the morning sky? Driving through the mist and fog, seeing the sun glitter off the net of dew thrown across the grass?

I had one of those mornings today. One of those mornings that seems filled with possibilities. A morning where you can start on a country road and end up just about anywhere.

You could end up driving up through eastern Pennsylvania, over the hills and dales filled with corn and apple trees and the Pennsylvania Dutch folk. You could see horse and buggies driving along busy country roads, heading to and fro, hither and yon. You could end up driving up to a hotel in a town by the interstate, a hotel that seems nothing but boring. But turn around and you can see miles and miles of rolling hills, filled with mist and the ghosts of nearby Gettysburg.

Or you might end up driving in the dark in Texas, slowly past a slaughterhouse. You can hear the sounds of the cattle lowing for what they might know is the last time. You pull up to the local store, intending to get a container of orange juice, but when you step out of the car? The smell of cattle, and death, is so thick in the air that you clamber back in the driver's seat, start the car and drive away without looking back.

You could drive through south Georgia, past one pork barbeque joint after another, all of them with signs consisting of cartoon pigs dressed in overalls, making exclamations like "Hooo, doggies!" or "Come on in!" And when you pass by that particular crossroads, the one with "Boy's Bar-B-Q" and head toward the next one, with "Auntie's Pork BBQ" located on the southeast corner, you'll drive through miles and miles of farmland, with stands selling peaches for warm summer cobbler with cream.

Or you might end up driving through the Green Mountains, with the leaves of the trees still a magically uniform green color, no hint of the reds, yellows, oranges and browns that will pop up in the next few weeks. You could drive for miles and miles without seeing a single person, just acres and acres of green, spinkled with black and white cows, just like the ice cream label.

You could find yourself in north Florida in a driving rainstorm, four other people shoved into a tiny Japanese import with luggage falling out of the trunk. Passing by yet another Waffle House at 4 a.m. when your windshield wiper, flinging itself so viciously back and forth across the glass, finally gets fed up and simply flings itself...off...into the night, leaving the driver's side covered and recovered with big saucers of rainwater.

And you might end up on midwestern backroads, the windows open and the wind in your hair. A new cd in the player. Still early enough to skip out of work if only you can find someone to play hookey with. The temperature under 80 still, just a bit before noon. Blowing past blueberry farms and produce stands, slowing down a bit for towns made up of five houses and a church at the crossroads. The moisture in the air crinkling up the ends of your hair. The rest of the day before you, unraveling in unknown splendor.