Weekend Drives by Nancy L. Eady

 My husband and I love to go for drives on the weekends. We always enjoy scenic drives, but scenic drives such as the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park are few and far between. But we find it equally interesting to ride around different neighborhoods to see the houses, the way they are decorated and the landscape and terrain that surrounds them. 

 In doing so, there are certain rules to follow. First, and most important, is to look absolutely harmless. Since we drive through neighborhoods fairly slowly, we make sure that we make eye contact with any person indulging in a walk around the street to smile and give the friendly wave that means we mean them no harm. Second, we are most considerate when other cars get behind us. We immediately pull over to the side to let them go by so we don’t hold them up. The third thing to remember is that if we are driving through a neighborhood in mild weather with the windows down, we need to make any critical comments much more quietly than we would with the windows down. 

We don’t focus solely on multi-million-dollar home neighborhoods, either. We enjoy those but regular neighborhoods can be interesting, too. And here in the Birmingham area we are constantly amazed at the terrain we go through. This is very hilly territory; technically, the northern part of Birmingham is included in the foothills of the Appalachians, but even in the southern part there are tons of hills, gullies and valleys.

 Since our latest project is to map out ideas for the yard in our new house, you might think that winter is the worst time for such drives, but the opposite is true. In winter, you can see the bones of the landscaping plan (where there is one) in the yards much clearer than in the spring when the flowers are running rampant and the leaves are full and green. 

These drives also give me scope for imagination. When we drive by the obligatory pink house in a neighborhood (and yes, there is ALWAYS at least one pink house in every neighborhood), I try to imagine who lives there. And it’s hard to imagine what people do in some of the mega-mansions we’ve driven by. I can’t imagine using as many rooms as those houses have. I sometimes wonder if the people in those houses don’t live in one block of rooms per season just to be sure every room gets lived in. There are other questions to ponder also. For example, many houses in this area have purchased narrow, tall grey signs with the word “Welcome” painted decoratively on them. I don’t know who came up with the idea for the signs, but apparently they made a killing off of them. 

Some of the charm of these drives is just the opportunity to spend time together, enjoying each other’s company and the observations we make. It’s a way to stop and smell the roses, even if we are doing it in a car at 25 miles an hour. 

At the end, I always feel refreshed with creative batteries recharged. That is reason enough to take them, even if none of the other reasons were sufficient.  

What activities do you do to clear your mind of worries and recharge your creative batteries?