Sometimes I don't fully appreciate the place that I call "home".For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to go on a bit of a nature walk so I set aside the fact that it was 96 degrees outside and grabbed my camera. I already had the perfect spot in mind, it was a place that I drove past at least twice a week, and while it wasn't the most obscure location it was still ripe with photo opportunities.
I parked my van at this abandoned one room church that sat along a country road that was traveled only by people who knew where they were going. My destination wasn't far from where I parked, but the only way to get there was by walking along the road.I was familiar enough with the area to know that the locals drive the road well above the posted 40 MPH speed limit sign so when I heard the first car approach I stepped off into the high grass at the edge of the road.
The car slowed to a stop and the automatic window came down."Do you need a ride?"
It was a young woman with two young children strapped in car seats in the back of her car.
"No thanks," I said as I wiped the sweat from my forehead. "I'm parked right up the road."
That was the first of ten cars that passed me during the time that I was on the roadside, and each of them stopped to make sure I was okay. Even the old farmer who was hauling a load of hay on his tractor slowed to make sure that I wasn't in distress.
"If you need a phone I got one uptahouse.""No sir, I'm okay."
"Well then," he reached into a cooler that was strapped to the side of his Massey Ferguson with a bungee cord and pulled out a bottle of water that had stopped being cold sometime around lunch, "take this so you don't get yourself a heat stroke."
I smiled.
This was the place that I called home.
A place where strangers didn't mind stopping to help a woman walking alongside the road.
A place where strangers offered you something to drink on a hot summer day.Sometimes I forget to appreciate this place that I see every day, and the people I pass as I drive down the road. Today I felt the heartbeat of my small mid-western town.
The heartbeat of home.
