I played hooky one morning. Instead of turning on my computer at my appointed writing time, I decided to go for a walk.
I stood on my front porch and considered where to walk. An asphalt path between sheltering trees at the end of our street looked inviting. That path had changed in the years I had lived in this house. The dirt path of fifty years ago had become asphalt, but still it beckoned me.
I remembered moving into our house. That first morning I woke up to find the front door open. My three-year-old son was gone. I panicked. I looked up and down the street and then I saw David. My little boy, still in his pajamas, was talking to a man near the place where the path disappeared beyond the trees. I was grateful that neighbor was there.
As the years passed, my children and I often wandered down that dirt path, stepped across the broken fence and walked up and down the railroad tracks. We walked on the rails or hopped from one wooden cross-tie to the next. We collected the rusty spikes that had been left beside the tracks. We took them home and painted railroad spike worms. Sometimes we saw rabbits in that undeveloped area near the railroad tracks, and once I saw a pheasant. Although we never saw a racoon, we found its tracks and made plaster casts of them.
Sometimes my children and I walked across the railroad tracks to Trevarno Road. Walking down this road was like stepping into the past. The street was wide with a grassy median. We liked the old-fashioned streetlights. The houses were set back from the street with large landscaped front yards. Each house was unique—unlike the duplicated ones in our housing development. Most of the houses on Trevarno Road had been built in the early 1900’s’ when there was a factory located in this area, and these houses were the company houses from that era. Knowing the history of Trevarno Road added to our enjoyment of it.
My children left home, married and returned with their children. I took grandchildren to walk along the railroad tracks. We walked down Trevarno road. Then we picnicked on a small knoll and sent Frisbees flying above the weeds.
Developers have found this area near the railroad tracks. Houses have been built, and a wall blocks my access to the railroad tracks and Trevarno Road. Now I walk down the path to a small park, and I bring my grandchildren to enjoy the playground equipment and walk along the low stone wall.
I played hooky one morning and went for a walk instead of writing. It turns out that my writing found me.