The long way round

There was a shorter road and we knew about it, and we took the other one anyway, the one that goes out past the water tower and loops back through the fields before it remembers where it was going.

It added forty minutes. Nobody said anything about the forty minutes.

The point of the long way round is that it isn't for anything.

The light was doing the thing it does in late August, where it comes in almost flat and turns everything the colour of the inside of a peach. The grass had gone over to seed weeks ago. When the wind moved through it you could watch the whole field change its mind at once.

We stopped twice. Once because of a hawk on a fence post that let us get much closer than it should have, and once for no reason I can reconstruct now.

I keep thinking there should be more to say about it. There isn't. It was a Tuesday and we drove the long way and it was one of the better days of the year.

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