Walking Between Summer Rains

Between the rains last week, we slipped out for our familiar two-mile walk.

It’s a simple road: one mile gently uphill, one mile back down again. Not steep enough to be a workout, just enough that the return feels like a gift. Though truthfully, it’s a pleasure both ways.

The mountain air was cool. A farm truck rumbled past now and then. Blackberries along the roadside ditches were ripe and warm, and we picked as we walked. If you can gather more than you eat before you get home, you’ve accomplished something. We managed it—but only by a handful.

Wild blackberry vines in the roadside ditch

Wild blackberries

Moth mullein

I carried my foraging basket and kitchen shears, so every few minutes we’d stop to gather wildflowers: black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, field daisies, evening primrose, bee balm, and chicory. We left the wonderfully improbable Turk’s cap lilies standing where they were, nodding in the breeze like bright lanterns turned upside down.

On our mile of road there are only a handful of farmhouses, more barns than homes, and not all of them occupied. A few chickens scratching. A couple of rabbits. Two faithful dogs announcing our arrival from the same porch they always guard.

Little shed and flowers

Rosy maple moth on the phlox

Basket full of wildflowers

If you haven’t lived somewhere deeply rural, it’s difficult to describe the quiet. Not silence—there are birds calling, wind moving through the trees—but a kind of spaciousness that lets every small thing be heard.

I know we won’t always live here.

Maybe that’s why I find myself trying to memorize it all: the curve of the road, the mist gathering on the mountain ahead, the sweetness of wild blackberries, the fields full of flowers no one planted. To drink it in while I can. To let it become part of me.

Just as we stepped onto the porch again, a soft rain began to fall.