The Hill Country Morning Mist

I used to love driving to work in the early morning through Texas hill country. The roads were made for my sports car. Limestone walls on either side enhanced the acoustic echo of the stereo as I sat low to the winding road, legs and arms fully extended, mind fully a part of the experience. What an experience that 18-minute, 12-mile ride could be.

There were no straight lines to be the shortest point between my home and work. Only curves—luscious, lean-into-them-curves—that my car knew so well it would start to take them seconds before I had the need. The road, the car, they made me feel like the consummate fighting horseman riding the best trained warrior stallion. We’d enjoy each other and the journey more than any destination. The strings and mystic flutes of Celtic music playing as we rode.

Always in anticipation, I lived for the ride down the great hill.

The great hill could fair be called that as it was on Great Hills Road. It rose 1200 feet at about a 35 degree angle. That made it great to other people. What made it great to me was the untouched, perfect view. From on the hill, it was all tops of trees and rolling hills where no humans had found a way to build. Live oaks and red bud trees were packed so tightly that no sunlight had a space to find the ground. A magic morning mist, a cloud really, would hang over them. Each day I’d look in disbelief that what I saw was real. I understood how it must feel to be a flying highwayman.

And then the drive would take me down into the mist of Avalon.

Sometimes I’d think, I hope even, that maybe I would cross through time. I’d find that I was on a horse in some far off forgotten place, living life that might have been once upon a time.

To this day I still believe that somewhere within the hill country hidden by the morning mist there is a secret waiting to be found.

—me strauss Letting me be