It’s heel-dragging time

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”  Mahatma Gandhi

Often, I drive township gravel roads rather than city, county or state paved ones. “Why?” you may ask. Have you heard of slow food? How about slow water? Each is premised on slowing down and  working with nature’s systems more than engineering a quick profit. In a similar vein, I’m working on slow travel, trying to learn how to enjoy the trip as much as arriving safely at the destination.

It’s rare that I drive less than the speed limit on a paved road or highway. On a gravel road, I’m more likely to slow down, put the windows down, and watch for roadside wildflowers. Not every rural road in Minnesota has prairie plants blooming between a cornfield and the ditch, but enough do that it’s worthwhile to enjoy the black-eyed Susans, bee balm/bergamot and occasional cluster of purple coneflowers. Sometimes there are even butterflies on the flowers and swallows on the telephone wires as further enticements to let beauty and pleasure, not speed, be my driving force.

a field of wild bergamot and ???

Photo by J. Harrington

One soy bean field I drove past this morning had a whitetail doe toward the back edge and her adventurous  fawn close to the road. As I approached, the fawn looked up, saw the Jeep, turned around, and started bounding toward mom with a whitetail flag waving and the fawn yelling: “Mom, mom! Did you see it? Why didn’t you warn me about those big, shiny monsters? I promise I’ll never go near the road again!” (Until the next time.)

Wise people from cultures much older than ours have advised us to slow down. The above quote by Gandhi is one example. Another is “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”  Lao Tzu

I was delighted the other day to learn that Joni Mitchell, who has written much of the soundtrack of my life, closed out this years Newport Folk Festival with a performance, her first in about two decades. Joni knows a lot about the problems going too fast can cause.

The Circle Game

by Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar 
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder 
And tearful at the falling of a star 

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams 
Words like when you're older must appease him 
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now 
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town 
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down 

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty 
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

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