essay

The Long and Grinding Road

I live in Southern Appalachia, a region where curb proximity is often valued as much as curb appeal. Given this, I wasn’t surprised when a friend’s first question about my new house was, “How long does it take you to go out and get your mail?” I admitted that the task required taking a little hike. Concerned, she inquired, “Can you at least see the mailbox from your house?” I can’t see the mailbox from my house, my front porch or even the end of my driveway. My mailman leaves correspondence nearly half a mile down the crater-and-mound obstacle course that leads to my house (aka the gravel road). His car knows what’s good for it. My poor little four-door sedan never stood a chance traveling this sort of terrain. The car’s undercarriage gets scraped daily and dirty updrafts keep its silver finish a dull grey. I’m certain my car pines for the yellow line-abiding life it used to lead. But, green acres, we’re here to stay.

The walk to my mailbox is long, but it is also lovely. My road, with all of its personality quirks, is flanked by rhododendron-rich mountains and sprawling meadows. The first time I walked its length I actually timed myself. Just how long would it take me to perform a task that, as standard practice, takes a few minutes at most? By timing myself, I was trying to convince myself that the walk to the mailbox wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and it wasn’t—just not in the way I expected.

I stepped out into the sun and passed wild blackberry bushes and a creekfed pond. Finally, I prepared to traverse gravel territory, time-a-ticking. But something made me pause. Just ahead of me stood a doe and her two young charges, dappled with the white polka dots of youth. The creatures were stretching their slender necks to feed off of the grassy knoll on the side of the road. I halted and stood as still as I could on the ever-shifting ground. The deer didn’t budge. Mail mission in mind, I hesitantly took a step forward. Gravel crunched as if the earth was speaking through turning stones. The gravel acted as a natural habitat alarm system, alerting the deer to my presence. Suddenly, the animals leapt from the gravel onto the soft grasses of a nearby field, babies moving with the same liquid grace as their mother. I realized then that they likely preferred gravel dancing to blacktop stepping. And, after a year of living on this long and grinding road, I do too.

My road has escaped paving because there are only a few houses up from mine. You could walk my road for hours without seeing a car. When my neighbors happen to pass, plumes of dirt follow their vehicles like clay-colored clouds. Unfortunately, I am occasionally caught in the wrath of their moving dust storm— coughing, sneezing, shaken from my bucolic dream state. Through my squinted eyes, I always make out a hand raised in greeting. No driver has ever failed to wave to me as I walk my one-lane road. Its narrowness ensures that they’re too close to ignore me and the treachery of gravel under tires means they’re never going too fast to see me.

Years ago, I read a local newspaper story about a woman who lived not far from where I live now. I was residing in town then, on a state-maintained asphalt road, and she was fighting to keep her rural road from being paved. Back then, it was hard for me to imagine why someone would resist a silky smooth path. I hadn’t yet realized that the wisdom of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” could be applied to gravel roads as easily as it was to his two grassy paths. The woman’s pro-gravel conviction was the opinion less traveled by. It was not shared by her neighbors, many of whom saw paving the road as a way to a better life—a faster-paced, mainstream, slightly-citified (or at least slightly-small town) life. A gravel road may seem the antithesis of progress to some, but it has become my preferred route of forward motion.

That first trip to the mailbox took 15 minutes at a fast clip, but I’ve since discovered that 30 minutes is a more reasonable amount of time to get the most out of the journey—not that I know exactly how long it takes. I long ago lost the urge to time myself. Each afternoon when I step outside to make my way down to the blacktop road that shoulders up to my mailbox, I’m stepping out of my wiredweary, streamlined world and into an environment that forces me to slow down and pay attention.

A walk down a gravel road means a chance to admire the beauty of a deer, the sound of meadow grass in high wind, the way sunny days create green and blue stained glass out of the forest canopy and—in fall—the way acorns make drumlike thuds on the forgiving forest floor. The gravel, alive as ever, continues to alert my animal neighbors to my presence as it grinds in song to the acorn beat, making rhythmic noise under my slow-moving feet. This country road of mine may keep my tires perpetually out of alignment, but it deserves some credit for keeping my soul in tune.

Leigh Ann Henion is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Carolina. Her work regularly appears in publications such as The Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian, and The Christian Science Monitor. Visit www.leighannhenion.com to learn more.

~Leigh Ann Henion