Morning sun warms the only calm we’ll see today. Quickly, we gather up the children. They move sluggishly until we promise them they can ride the cattle. That inspires some welcome pace from the young rascals.
The road is our only lifeline all the way out here. The ocean is hundreds of miles away. Our rivers are small which makes them ideal for drinking water, bad for travel. From farm to farm, for weddings and funerals, the road is our conduit and our keeper. And there is nothing I love more than the road in the morning.
It is a place of peace in our lives of chaos. Yellow sunlight washes over it and us, and I can feel the rays burn away the dregs of the night’s chill. The stud farm is only a few miles, and the walk is not long. When we take the road so early, it is an empty place so we do not hurry.
There is no need. We have, in the post-dawn warmth, that elusive luxury of time. Down the road, the stud farm sprawls at the base of a long ridge. We march our cattle there, to breed and be bred, to ensure the health of our stock and the stock of our neighbors.
In these brief moments, the road is our artery, and we are the oxygen transporting life. The cattle, in the literal sense, and our own in the symbolic.
Soon, much too soon, the mechs will come. Their hydro-motors will hum, and steam will spray from their curly-cue exhausts. These ruts and ridges in the road are their doing. Tank belts and wheels of every tread and size, even the claw-footed mech-beasts made to look like elephants. Why they do not use real elephants will forever be beyond my bucolic mind.
And for that I whisper a silent thanks.
The road is not our lifeline alone. By noon, the packed dirt will be churned anew from the hoards of people and cattle, by the claws of bio-gen leopards and the boots of the town’s wealthy kids that gleefully flee from the family pet. And wave after wave of mechs, an endless supply, bringing people and weapons and other, smaller machines from the base in the north to the base in the south. Inevitably, in the late afternoon, they will pack up and thunder along our road again to bring everything right back.
So we savor the mornings we get to flow this way in our own time, on our own orders. The sounds are my favorite. The nervous whinnies of our cattle as they try to avoid slipping on the uneven road. Muttered prayers from my sister, certain that her pleading is all that keeps the giant rolling machines at bay for as long as we march. Behind us, the melody of our boys’ delighted shrieks and the harmony of the thudding footfalls by their inelegant steeds. It’s music in my ears, the only piece of true art I have ever known.
It is a symphony. It is oxygen, pumped from the artery of our lives directly to my soul. These mornings, I breathe deep and feel the sweetness of life massage my throat and fill my lungs.
The Tall Tale Year 