Country Road

I was walking down a side street here in North Hollywood, and marveling at the state of it around the hour of two in the morning. It so happens that while it intersects with numerous major arteries, there's a long stretch of it that is uninterrupted by any intersections or lights. As I plodded along to my home down the road a bit, I was reminded very much of some rural road down which one might find Tom Sawyer, Ichabod Crane or Scout and Jem walking. I had to use my imagination a bit given the high concentration of buildings, but the feel of the street in the middle of the night made it very easy to do.

I thought how badly the illusion would be degraded if I were to walk the same street during the day, with all the people who use it in a condition of wakefulness. It would be so hot, noisy and urban, instead of what it was so late at night. It was so still.  There was not a thing moving, and the distant sound of traffic on the freeway might have been a rushing river. Apart from that, there was no noise save for birds chirping. There was little light as well. The stars might well have provided some of the illumination I walked by. It truly felt as if I might have been not just in another, lightly populated place, but another time as I suggested above.