A Sense of Wonder

Sand Roads For nearly half a century we’ve lived at the end of a sand road. Not the same road, but a sand road—and all sand roads have much in common. We’ve sometimes hated it in the spring. That week or two or three between when the snow melts and the frost goes out, that’s the worst time. Puddles grow into ponds. Ruts become canyons. All vehicles take on the same sandy hue. Back when our kids were still in school, the Spirit-in-charge-of-watching-over-roads would hear two sets of contradictory requests: the youngsters hoping the school bus would get stuck, and my wife praying it would not. Each year, by the time the frost is gone, we’ve made plans to haul in more fill. Some nice Class 5. Many yards of nice Class 5. Hang the expense—we’ll fight those ruts no longer. Someday maybe we’ll even have it blacktopped. Yes, by tar—a road so smooth and firm and water-shedding as to make the pickup ride like a Rolls Royce. Then the hieroglyphics start appearing. Fresh grouse tracks by the power line cut. The straight dot-to-dot of fox prints. The meandering lines left by a doe and two yearlings. Hoof prints from a neighbor’s horse. And on it goes through spring and summer into fall. Each day’s walk reveals new scribbles in the sand; mute messages from birds and snakes and furbearers (ranging in size from shrew to raccoon to coyote to black bear), delicate notations from insects, the scribed arcs of wind-swung plants, even the skid marks of fallen leaves. A momentary shower leaves its dotted inscription pockmarked over the squiggles left by a turtle’s tail. We watch, enthralled, as birds take dust baths in the old sand road. We note where larger birds seek gizzard grit. We stop to study the mysterious industry of ants, and let our eyes wander along the twisty lines of beetle tracks. And when it rains enough to wash the dust away, we find the road transformed into a treasure chest, speckled with shiny agates aglow like drops of fallen sunset. It’s then that we have a change of heart, and find ourselves forsaking the earlier resolutions of spring. Now the true value of our sand road stands revealed. Will we pave such a precious place of riches? Not on your life! What’s convenience compared to this living notebook, this half-mile-long recorder of natural drama? No thanks, Mr. Progress. We’ll keep to the old ways, washboard and all.