The road, more or less, travelled.

I love driving. Particularly, I love driving in the country. Something I have spent many days doing with my father. Driving around the North Island of New Zealand, delivering machinery as part of his business. I'm not so fond of city traffic, especially after working as a courier for a few years, but I can tolerate it. I prefer the open, uncongested country roads.

We have friends that live in Mudgee. A country town about four hours drive to the north west of Sydney, Australia. Long weekends and holidays are a ready excuse to escape the city. So it was, that last Easter, we packed the car and headed for wide open spaces. The trip itself turned sour when we passed through The Blue Mountains. This was when the weather closed in and the traffic went crazy. Low cloud, rain and narrow roads with too few passing lanes. Seemingly endless road works and speed restrictions, coupled with impatient, incompetent drivers turned a four hour drive into six.

Even after the congestion cleared into a short stretch of wider double-lane roads, things did not improve much. I always seemed to be following those drivers that get nervous above certain speeds. 80 in 100 zones, 40 in a 50. Nearing Mudgee my patience was all but eroded and I was now making the most of every passing opportunity. Safely and legally of course. I was just sick of following traffic. I wanted clear space around me. That was when I passed one car too many, a white Holden Commodore. One that I speculated may well have been a Plain Clothes patrol car. So past I went. Half a click later, the lights came on. Blue and Red lights. All I could think was "Double Demerit points".

So the start to the weekend wasn't so great.

But it did get better, the weather remained in a state of flux, between sunshine and rain. Great food, drink and the company of friends. We opened a bottle of French Champagne to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary.


Then there is the road home, a road we are all on in these lives of ours.

We left Mudgee on the Monday afternoon in mediocre weather, raining a bit but trying to clear. We had spectacular views of cloud capped mountain tops and idyllic countryside.

It was in that first hour of the journey
that the breathe was sucked out of my body.
 We were passing through the region of
 Capertee when everything seemed to stand
 still, just for a moment, at 100kmh.

The sun was low in the west and suddenly broke through the clouds. All around the landscape was radiant. The trees lit up in many hues of iridescent green. Greens so bright they were almost painful to look at. To the east, the sky was very different. Black with heavy cloud that towered up to the heavens. Cloud so dark it was gunmetal blue. Contrasted against the imposing sky, this brilliance of green washed the land.

Moments later we plunged into heavy fog and low lying cloud. Visibility was down to a bare 50 metres. Wipers and fog lights on, speed reduced, proceeding with caution, wishing I was back in sun-drenched lands again.

This is our journey home. We yearn for heavenly vistas, washed in light. Colours beyond our imagination. How we long for them. We see a brief glimpse, a taste of eternity, we want to stay there. We'd rather not face the darkening storm. To feel the lash of wind and rain. We'd rather not pass through fog banks, where the path is obscured and uncertainty creeps in. We crave the light. But the light is not behind, it is ahead. It is our journey, our aim. It is the road we travel.

The road that leads us home.