1) Stairway Into Nothing
The night sky was opaque and seemed to stretch forever as I stared up at it through the car window. The stars were bright here, blazing like scattered embers burning their way into a dark rug. My feet draped lazily over the grocery boxes crowding the back seat. I knew the routine well. Every weekend as soon as school was finished, my mother and I would pack up the car and go north, past the cows to our little house by the sea.
The car pulled to a stop in a gravel strewn pull-out and the car door thudded as my mother stepped out onto the ground, the pebbles crackled under her feet like strong jaws crushing hard candies.
I felt the boxes being pulled out from under me as little by little my mother stacked them in front of the car. My mother’s voice came from behind me, the timber joining the symphony of crickets on the wind.
“We’re here.” She said quietly. “It’s time to get out.”
The gravel pullout was thin compared to the thick asphalt of highway 1 that lay before us. Every so often beams of light would spread around the corner, and a car would streak past us as we waited for the right moment.
As soon as all seemed quiet, we filled our arms with as much as we could hold and we raced across the street, searching the high trees and full bushes for our path. It was a hidden path that lay secretly in the bushes. At night it almost completely disappeared into the shadows. Like the green in the leaves and the browns on the trees, the path too became only a shade of grey, all the color seeping away into the darkness.
At last our hurried glances found the way to the pitch-black opening in the dark night, outlined sharply by the tall hedge separating the house from the road. Before another car could flash past we dived through to safety, stepping lightly across the berm onto the steep wooden stairs beyond the doorway into paradise.
Sometimes my foot would linger as I looked back at the whizzing cars, and then ahead to our dark wooden house, surrounded by dramatic vines and wide tropical leaves on every side. It was this berm that was the boundary between my bustling life in the city and my life in the country, full of long hikes and silence. My two lives seemed separated at the little line where the asphalt met the weeds. From the road, nothing of this place was visible, not even the mossy roof could be seen. From up there, just the road seemed to stretch forever. But down here, after descending the stairs, it was the neighboring ocean that claimed my eyes.
The car pulled to a stop in a gravel strewn pull-out and the car door thudded as my mother stepped out onto the ground, the pebbles crackled under her feet like strong jaws crushing hard candies.
I felt the boxes being pulled out from under me as little by little my mother stacked them in front of the car. My mother’s voice came from behind me, the timber joining the symphony of crickets on the wind.
“We’re here.” She said quietly. “It’s time to get out.”
The gravel pullout was thin compared to the thick asphalt of highway 1 that lay before us. Every so often beams of light would spread around the corner, and a car would streak past us as we waited for the right moment.
As soon as all seemed quiet, we filled our arms with as much as we could hold and we raced across the street, searching the high trees and full bushes for our path. It was a hidden path that lay secretly in the bushes. At night it almost completely disappeared into the shadows. Like the green in the leaves and the browns on the trees, the path too became only a shade of grey, all the color seeping away into the darkness.
At last our hurried glances found the way to the pitch-black opening in the dark night, outlined sharply by the tall hedge separating the house from the road. Before another car could flash past we dived through to safety, stepping lightly across the berm onto the steep wooden stairs beyond the doorway into paradise.
Sometimes my foot would linger as I looked back at the whizzing cars, and then ahead to our dark wooden house, surrounded by dramatic vines and wide tropical leaves on every side. It was this berm that was the boundary between my bustling life in the city and my life in the country, full of long hikes and silence. My two lives seemed separated at the little line where the asphalt met the weeds. From the road, nothing of this place was visible, not even the mossy roof could be seen. From up there, just the road seemed to stretch forever. But down here, after descending the stairs, it was the neighboring ocean that claimed my eyes.
posted by Integrity at 7:51 PM
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