The Country Girl

The noise of the city and the smell of exhaust surrounded her as she climbed onto the school bus with the other children. Laughing and squealing with joy, they found their seats. She sat down and put her little lunch box beside her. It was a warm spring day. Mom had put shorts and a top on her, instead of the typical dress or skirt that she al-ways wore to school. It was the day of her class trip.

The bus ride was not a memorable event. Neither going nor coming back stood out in her mind. They arrived at their destination and were led through a milk bottling plant. The milk squirted out of nozzles into tall, clear glass bottles. Then a round cardboard tab was pushed into the top of the bottle, followed by a paper cover that appeared to tighten around the bottle’s neck. Next she saw tiny cardboard containers fill with chocolate milk and she wondered if the same cow made white and chocolate milk at different times of the day.

She and her class were once more herded along in a straight line and each was given a pint of milk to drink through a little straw. As they exited the door into the bright sunlight the teacher led them across a gray graveled road that had deep ruts in it. There were standing puddles from a recent spring rain and some of the boys jumped into them. Water splattered everywhere while the girls tiptoed gingerly around the water to avoid getting dirty. Once across the road they stepped onto a pristine meadow of soft grass that had an old wooden fence running across it.

There were huge old trees with thick trunks that showed the wear of time. The leaves had grown in after the long, winter months, and the branches spread over the children like a cozy blanket on a winter’s night. Under the trees, the children opened their lunchboxes and ate their food. Some of the kids had Roy Rogers’ lunchboxes and other had Flash Gordon. She had a Howdy Doody box and it came with its own thermos.

When her peanut butter and jelly sandwich was eaten she peeked through a space in the fence as she sipped her milk. The liquid was fresh and cold as she drew it up into her mouth. She could smell the cows on the other side of the fence. While watching them nibble on the bright green grass, she noticed that they all had very long tails that constantly swished the flies away. Their large black eyes peered back at her. She could see lovely long eyelashes on their lids. They slowly moved about each other, ignoring the noisy children on the other side of the fence. “What a wonderful smell,” she thought, as her forehead leaned on a plank of the old fence. There had never been a smell like that in her little city backyard. It wasn’t the smell of oil or garbage or exhaust. It wasn’t the stale morning air of a city. It was sweet. It was clean. She could smell the fence, the grass, the cows, the trees and even the sky!

After she had gotten her fill of watching the animals, she lay on her back under a tree. There was a silence that she had never before experienced. It encompassed her as the branches swayed above, and the sun peeked through, when it found a space between the leaves. They were translucent as they shimmered in the light. The dark brown limbs moved in different directions as the leaves danced to and fro to the music of the wind. Crickets busily chirped in the grass as if they were gossiping about the scene before them. The dirt around the enormous roots smelled of sweet earth as they rose far above the surface of the ground, cradling her as she relaxed. There grew soft-looking moss near the roots on the side that never got much sun. As she ran her fingers over it, the feeling resembled that of her baby sister’s blanket. Ivy scaled the sides of the trunk, as if to protect it from the wind. Ants traveled in a long line, leaving the bark, traveling over the roots, and going off on some faraway mission. Several hawks screeched from a high branch and took flight. She watched them until they were tiny dots in the sky. The faint sound of a plane, high above, droned softly. It felt so safe under that old tree. The mighty roots cuddled her as she lay admiring the view. She thought that she could just go to sleep right there in the roots of that old, old tree. The sky was a wonderful color blue and the white puffy clouds slowly moved along to their far away destination.

“Melody.” In the distance she could hear a familiar voice calling her name, and she opened her eyes. It was time to go back to the city on the bus. She lay there until the very last minute, but the other children were gathering their things and, one by one, they were piling onto the bus to find their seats. It was getting cooler now so she put on her sweater. She peered through the window. As the bus began to move away, she saw the old tree standing there, strong and stern as it had stood for 100 years. She turned to see it as they rumbled down the country road towards the city and home.

The sounds and the smells and the beauty of that day had turned her into a country girl. At that very moment, as the tree faded into the distance, that 6 year old made up her mind that she would find that magic again.

--Melody Allen Olsen

Melody Allen Olsen now lives in Warwick, New York surrounded by some of the most beautiful country in the world.