The Secret Life of Bees

I am sixty pages into this “chick lit” book by Sue Monk Kidd, and I have to tell you, I am amazed and inspired. 

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Morning in Tennessee

This morning I woke up early and drove.  I don’t know if I was asphyxiated by close quarters with relatives, or close encounters with religious and political ideologies that seem so different than my own, but “my feet tugged at the floor,” and the blessed backroads, the ones I no longer live with in the southlands, came acallin’. 

Point and shoot was the order of the day as I meandered down to Goodlettsville, TN, and then out in some general direction that seemed like the right way.  And for half an hour I assaulted by eyes with frosted white hillsides and scraggly treetops, and drove on, thinking about the topography of the soul.

Something inside wanted to keep on driving.  Something inside always wants to keep on driving. 

I wonder if the backroads in Uruguay will ever cradle my soul the way these backwoods do. 

I passed through “Alta Loma” and remembered that before English was the dominant language in these parts and after the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Shawnee lost prominence, it was SPANISH that was spoken here, with old Hernando De Soto and his chaps romping around these backwoods. 

I wonder if, when Hernando De Soto was wandering around the backwoods if he missed the ridges and valleys of Extremadura, or if there was something here that made him feel at home.

Of course, maybe hunger, hunger for fame, for wealth, for power…  maybe he never even saw them at all.

I decided that I had seen enough backwoods for one morning, and remembered that I had promised to make breakfast this morning.  So I drove back from Alta Loma to Ridgetop, watching the “red wafer” of sun break over the hills, gave thanks for the breath I draw and for another day to live and love in this beautiful world.

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