And I think of a summer’s day in the 1950's walking to Corinne with my best friend Marybeth under a wide blue prairie sky underlined with lush green wheat fields. When I entertain that memory I feel my bare feet padding the warm pebbled shoulder of Highway 39 paved with asphalt too hot to step on with uncalloused teenaged skin.
Our adolescent conversation was seven miles long with only occasional concern that we hadn’t told our mothers that our ‘walk’ would take us out of the sheltered bounds of our small prairie town. No cars passed either way, so no hint nor even mild suggestion of danger that could lurk on the broad highway crept into our young and innocent minds.
This digital image of late summer fields that accompanies this post, although an image taken fifty miles from Highway 39, and about fifty years later, evokes memories of what now seems a much more innocent time. This sun-warmed and kind memory is a place that I like to go ~ this carefree adventure onto the open road with a friend by my side.
“It’s surprising how much memory is built
around things unnoticed at the time.”
~ Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
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