The winding road couldn’t decide where to go, or it wanted us to be lost. You said we should abandon it, now. “There must be another way round.”
Agreed.
I was secretly hoping we’d find a field of flowers to wade through, a singular delight waiting for those who venture out this far in May or June. That meant leaving the road that was leading us nowhere.
These hills looked promising. And perhaps you too wished for a wild-blooming meadow we could wander through.
We climbed an up-rolling slope — scrambling across gullies, pushing through thickets, and bounding over soggy springs. How were you not out of breath after all that?
“We can follow this,” you said brightly, while I paused to dab the sweat from my brow.
It was the faint trail of a creature that nested thereabouts, recently used though lightly trodden so detecting it took some skill.
Before we moved on, a spot of white caught my eye — a blossom that shyly peeked out from the safety of surrounding brambles, which kept away brutes that might eat it or pluck it or trample it down.
I kept my distance, but allowed myself hope. Where there’s one flower there must be more. The thought helped to quicken my step as I followed after you.
When the trail disappeared into shrubs that hid a private burrow, we turned aside, forged a new path, and soon crested the hill.
Flowers hypnotically swayed in fields of yellow, red, pink and green — softly seducing with nature’s perfume, betokening spring’s delirium, and beckoning, beckoning for us to join them.
But we stood mesmerized by the mountains beyond.
“That is where we must go.”