The Red Road Home

Every place has an entrance.

Some are grand stone gates. Some are winding lanes hidden beneath old trees.

At Oz, it is a long gravel driveway stretching between rows of burning bushes.

When I planted them years ago, they were small enough that the dream required a little imagination. I could see what they might become long before they were tall enough to show anyone else.

That seems to happen often at Oz.

The place I see in my mind usually arrives long before it appears in the landscape.

If money were no object, I would probably pave the entire driveway with yellow brick.

I have mentioned this idea often enough over the years that friends and family no longer take it seriously. They usually respond with practical concerns involving cost, maintenance, and common sense. They are probably right.

The driveway works perfectly well as it is.

Still, every time I drive home between the fields, I imagine what it might look like. A long yellow road leading toward a place called Oz seems less like an extravagance and more like simple honesty.

The practical side of me accepts that gravel is likely to remain the sensible choice. The part of me that planted burning bushes, dreams of Lantern Woods, and sees stories hidden in ordinary things is not entirely ready to let go of the idea.

A stand of trees becomes Lantern Woods.

A bare patch of ground becomes a garden.

A line of young shrubs becomes a vision of crimson stretching toward the horizon each autumn.

The burning bushes are still growing, but every year they come a little closer to what I imagined when I first tucked them into the ground.

In the fall, they catch fire with color.

The gravel road becomes a ribbon running through red and gold. The trees beyond them glow in the evening light, and for a few brief weeks the entrance to Oz looks almost exactly the way it did in my imagination.

Almost.

Because places like this are never really finished.

There is always another tree to plant.

Another flower bed to build.

Another corner waiting to become something beautiful.

Perhaps that is why I love the driveway so much.

It reminds me that Oz is not a destination I arrived at one day.

It is a place I am still creating.

Every trip down that road is a small journey between the world as it is and the world I hope it will become.

The horses do not notice the burning bushes.

The dogs certainly do not care.

But I notice.

I notice the little changes.

The extra height.

The deeper color.

The way a dream that once existed only in my imagination slowly takes root in the soil.

And on autumn evenings, when the red leaves catch the last light of the day, the road home feels a little bit magical.

As though Oz is quietly revealing itself, one season at a time.