A Season for Everything

I miss the cornfields on Gorrill Road. Walking that solitary lane was a respite from the pressures of life, an escape from the gravitational pull toward insanity. There was clarity in the cornfields of Gorrill Road, away from the noise, the traffic, the varied cacophony of town. Each step beyond the fringes of Bowling Green and into the countryside was a palpable move away from stress and confusion. Walking amidst the cornfields of Gorrill Road was walking with God, in the purest sense of the concept.

The transition in seasons could be easily observed from the vast fields of the countryside. Nothing changed very much in the scenery surrounding Gorrill Road, except for the corn and the weather. January and February were cold and white, drifts of snow scattered across the fields with any visible clumps of earth or broken stalks of grain standing frozen and lifeless. March and April were a time for change and fluctuation, a softening of the landscape, the fields becoming brown and black again, a smell in the air of something about to happen. May and June brought warmth, light, gentle rains, and the first shoots of green, peppering the flatland with color and life. Through July and August, the corn would grow and swell, like the climactic movement of a symphony; from small blades and tender shoots timidly peeking through the freshly plowed soil to generous husks and strong stalks towering over the land. In September and October, the green would fade to gold, longer shadows, cooler breezes. And in November and December, the landscape would gradually die, the rigor mortis of winter setting in slowly and patiently.

In those days, on those walks, I felt more alive simply knowing that the cornfields of Gorrill Road were caught in the same cycle of existence as I. Sometimes weekly, sometimes daily, I would drift through that countryside with a sense of profound, mysterious awe and understanding. I wanted to capture the experience of Gorrill Road as a testament to my own life experience. Indeed, I often thought about dragging out video or photography equipment, painting a small "X" on the asphalt, and establishing a ritual of recording the landscape to enable some kind of time-lapse view of this window on existence...

But I never followed through. In the end, I guess I felt that it would have been a violation, a pollution, a corruption of that sphere. Not just practically, but ideologically. Such an intrusion would have diminished the sanctity of those cornfields on Gorrill Road. Still now I miss that view. I yearn for those walks. I can't help but wish that I had that footage. Some solace, some reflection, some simplicity. A symbol recalling that there is a season for everything, a time for every purpose under heaven. Today, separated from the cornfields of Gorrill Road by years and by thousands of miles, I can only remember.