The Heartbeat of Home

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.