dusty cars

I was in "the city" the other day and got in the car with a friend. She commented about how "dirty" her car was. I looked around at it and couldn't help but chuckle.

Her pretty black city car was anywhere from dirty.

Mine on the other hand? Absolutely filthy.

Trips to the ball field for softball practice, trips to granparent's houses, or just trips to visit friends, require gravel roads around here. I love to hate them.

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Even when completely sealed up, windows tight, doors closed, the dust still infiltrates my nostrils. When it hasn't rained in a couple months, like as of late here, you can sense the dust particles filtering through the smallest of spaces and settling on the dash. And the outside? Forget it. You open the door and dust flies everywhere. You pop the trunk, you're covered in the ashy, dried dirt.

But the beauty? It is in the solitude of the dirt and gravel roads. It is in the rolling fields and the wildlife. It is in the old bridges you have to cross.

It's also in the company. On the highway each person is just a passing vessel of metal and machine, hardly worth your attention. But on a gravel road, barely wide enough for two cars, you have to pull over, slow down, and look at the person driving by. You wave, you maneuver around, and for a moment in time you're in it together with them; it's a dance in the middle of nowhere.

We could wash our car, but I don't see the point. We don't plan to stop driving these roads. And for now, my dirty car will remind me of a slower pace of life-- the dust simply a piece of my home.

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