[Random]

Summer never began until I made that trip down a tired, dusty country dirt road.

The road started in front of my grandparents’ house, it meandered its way through two fields of green,
past the irrigation ditches with their cool chemical smelling water, past Grandfather Oak,
the ancient tree whose wide trunk invited all to pour out their heartache and sorrow; to find their respite beneath its shadowy leafs.
I always took him up on his offer, sitting and leaning my sunburnt back against his raspy shell.
Sitting a spell and telling him of all I had seen and done since the last time I sat in his shade.
It only seemed proper to give him stories of the world he couldn’t visit, him being of the non-mobile type.
After my visit, the road, with its mud ruts didn’t seem as hot, or as long.
It seemed in a blink of an eye the fields on the right would end and the sign would appear.
A rusted sign attached to a cattle gate saying NO TRESPASSING.
That sign always gave me pause for a second, my natural tendency to follow the law, warring with on over whelming desire to complete my summer ritual.
A quick look around for farm trucks and then up under the gate.
The road took on a different texture, a different mood now; it felt lonely, and abandoned.
The road faded in and out, Grass and rock taking back sections of the road.
The rock took over the grass and road, broken and striated the rock turned into boulders.
My walk became a climb. I remember climbing, thinking this is too much, I’ve gone too far, I need to turn back, and then I would be there.
Just like that, like a mirage, it would spread out like a shock, Deep Turquoise water, shear block cut walls, the ground around it like some alien land, lifeless and dry.
I would sit on the edge of the quarry, sitting so still, so quiet while I told the water everything that had happened over the past year.
I told it of my fears, my joys, and the things I had seen and learned. It was as if I was clearing my head and heart of the past year.
Closing out the school year and making room for the new one to come.
I would sit by that deep still water and become lighter and freer with every second of that imaginary conversation.

It seemed to me that the trip back to my Grandparents house took only a blink of an eye…
I was eager for my family, my cousins, for the noise and the music of them.
Summer had officially begun.