Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: road


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Open road.

It was just after recess. Even on the coldest of days, we were always sweaty. We hung our coats back on the pegs. Mrs. Erickson stood at the front of our third grade class. She had a stack of papers in her hand. She told us to sit and take out our No.2 pencils. She gave a handful to the front person of each desk row. We passed the sheets back to the person behind us, along with our comments and guesses of what was to come. Each pass was like a short game of “whisper around the world.”

I held the horizontal lined paper between my fingers. It seemed all good things started with paper at Washington Elementary. The paper was lined, but not just single lines. Groups of three. Two solids middled by a dotted line. I was certain they were little highways. I would turn out to be right.

She used a three pronged chalk to make the same lines on the blackboard and began our cursive journey. She had the most beautiful penmanship I had ever seen. Upper and lower cases flowed along the paper highway, and we were off! We had already learned to read. Mrs. Bergstrom saw to that. But this, she said, was how we would communicate. It would be part of our identity. I opened the windows of my imaginary car. The wind blew through my hair and hand and I began to write. My name. My address. Sentences. Tiny trips at first, and then I was out on the open road. Faster. Longer. Free!

In the tenth grade, they taught us “behind the wheel,” in Driver’s Ed. But it was Mrs. Erickson who first gave us the keys.

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By name.

Left to my own devices each weekday of summer, I became quite adept at navigating this solo world of play. On the alternate days when I didn’t have a softball game, I figured out a way to play catch with myself. My mother bought a net that was strung between a metal square. If you threw the softball directly into the sweet spot it bounced directly back to you. I thought I was making a good decision when I placed the net in front of the garage. Because our driveway faced Van Dyke road, I didn’t want to throw the ball directly into what I loosely will call “traffic” (the random neighbor’s car).  Perhaps I overestimated my throwing accuracy. Hitting the target several times in a row, I gained the confidence to throw harder. I “wound up” and let the ball fly. Missing the target completely, the ball shattered the glass window of the garage door. 

I panicked. I looked around to see if anyone saw. There was no one there. Only my banana seat bike. It seemed to be the only answer. I dropped my glove and straddled the banana seat. Kicking the air. Trying desperately to keep up with the pedals as I raced down the hill toward the North End. The North End was the undeveloped land at the end of our neighborhood. Undeveloped by housing, but certainly overdeveloped in every school age kid’s mind that lived on this road. It was where every bad thing imagined or otherwise was sent to live. It was the threat of the unknown. The Bermuda Triangle of this small Minnesota town. Exactly the place where thieves or window breakers would go to hide.  I threw my bike into the side of the gravel pit and waited. 

It could have been hours, or a lifetime, I’m not sure how long. I imagined my story. It was robbers who did it. Certainly bad people who just wandered by while I was innocently playing. Or maybe it was one the Norton girls. Surely I could throw the blame at one of them. I kicked the dust with my bumper tennis shoes and thought and thought and thought. 

When I first heard my name called, I was sure it was the police. I held my breath. I heard it again. It became louder, but not angry. Almost sweet. Almost welcoming. I knew that voice. I got on my bike and rode towards it. My mother stood at the top of the hill. Every excuse fell from my heart and hands as I dropped my bike beside her on the gravel road. “I did it,” I said, hugging her nyloned work legs. “I know,” she said. We walked my bike back home.

Love will always call your name. Heart open, I walk the road. And listen.

Heart open, love called her name.
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The wisdom of gravel.

“If you know wilderness in the way you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.” Terry Tempest Williams

Maybe it was because one of my after school Thursday chores was dusting. Or that my tennis shoes were never white. That winter’s snowballs often contained bruising tiny pebbles. Or that my mom’s car forever needed washing. There were many reasons to dislike the gravel of Van Dyke road. I felt unmodern. Somehow behind. I had a sense of urgency to catch up. To go beyond. And certainly the graveled pace of this childhood road was only slowing me down.

I chased the pavement. Off to school. Jobs. Apartments. Books and art. Creation. Life. Smooth beneath, it all went so fast. My bike. My car. Even my shoes clicked along at a feverish pace. 

A country away, I hear it again, the slow crunch of gravel beneath my feet as I walk my daily route. My feet found their way back to the wilderness they ran from. Tiny pebbles say, “but you were hurt there.” Yes, I whisper. Massive rocks that line hills and turn into mountains say, “But you were loved there.” “Yes!” I shout. 

I have paid and paved my way in dust. Love walks with me. Slowing me down? Enough to see, I think. To feel. And I will never let it go.

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You know, you don’t have to follow.

There is a path easily made when things go wrong. I have walked that path before. Paved with anger, and how could they, and how stupid… It seems the stones just lay themselves — welcoming, encouraging.

I could see it happening at baggage claim. With each person. The temperature kept rising. The stones kept falling. We could have easily taken to it. It was so open. And I’m no saint. I have to admit that I can get impatient with incompetence. But usually, it only ends up making me feel bad. Makes my heart knotted and I hate feeling like that. So selfishly — and I don’t mean that as a bad word – I mean to take care of myself, I, we took a different path. The bags weren’t going to come faster if I shook my fist harder.

So we went to Whole Foods. Bought sushi. Spent the afternoon with real friends. We ate. We laughed. Lounged on sofas as comfortable as the palette of our matching personalities. We told the stories. Drank the coffee – told the stories faster and laughed louder.

Maybe it was my grandfather who first told me, find your own path. My mother repeated it. And I have wandered and stumbled and fumbled my way along, but oh, what a journey! It has been written before – “the road less traveled”, I suppose – but I think it’s worth repeating again and again. I know I need to hear it. Make your own way, at your own pace, with your own unknotted heart.

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Stuck, or free?

Every time I have a knot in my shoelace, which is every day, I wonder, “Why do I always have a knot in my shoelace?”  But I never think, “Well, I won’t walk today.” I love to take walks. Something new is always discovered, worthy of every knot struggled.  


We could stop doing things every time there was a struggle, but soon we would all be paralyzed. There will always be difficulties, large and small. Knots in shoelaces. Rocks in shoes. Paths unknown. But we move ahead.


Georgia O’keefe said,  “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”  


Everyone has fear.  Difficulties. Do you hear that?  Everyone.  Something, someone will always try to stop you, stand in your way. Always. But you have a choice. A decision to make each day. Stuck, or free? Release the knot. Lace up. Let go. Look at the road. It’s open.