"Barney?!"

Chicago author Nelson Algren said, “A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street.” Chicagoans, but not just Chicagoans, have always found something instructive, and pleasing, and profound in the stories of their block, of Main Street, of Highway 61, of a farm lane, of the Celestial Highway. Tell us the story of a street, path, road—real or imagined or metaphorical.

I think my parents had to explain it every time we turned onto my street. It didn't matter, though; my five-year-old self would always be thrilled that she lived on Barney Rd.

What can I say. I've lived a charmed life.

Varney Road, with a V, is my personal epitome of all things New Hampshire: a rocky, dirt, poorly-drained track that vacationers pummeled every July in their mad rush away from work and towards their speed boats and fishing poles. Right along with them, packing our lives away for a few weeks, we would load up the car and crate my poor cat (who hated the car and still got shoved that tiny little box disturbingly often). I fell asleep during that car ride, but woke up when we made that left onto Varney, pulled into our driveway, and unpacked into that particular kind of empty, cedar-smelling air that a house exhales while it waits for its migratory inhabitants. My main interests, when I was younger, were outside--playing on the rocks next door or fishing out in the lake. Sometimes, too, my dad would take me for a bike ride on his old blue five-speed, and I would sit sideways on the bar in front of him. Then, I got my own bike, and we would go further down the dusty dirt road, with my dad always making me go in front o f him so he could watch out for cars coming from behind.

Eventually, he stopped coming, and I went out alone. Some of my clearest memories are diffused with the road's greenish-golden sunlight and the leaves' flickering shadows on the ground, when I couldn't hear the cars coming because the wind was rushing past my ears so quickly. I loved to walk down it and listen to the birds, looking for wildflowers to press. Once in a while, I would find a special rock with a unique shape or color, and I would put it in my poket until I got home and it was forgotten. The trees spoke in the breeze and the road smelled like summer. I was happy without even knowing it.

The year we packed up the car for the last time and pulled into the driveway was the year they started paving. At first, it was only a small segment near the entrance of the road, but they steadily added on year by year until the dirt and rocks and ruts were covered by smooth black asphalt. I didn't like it, and I didn't hate it. It was simply different, and I got used to it. Now the road scorches hot on my bare feet, and my bicycle glides down the small hills without so much as a shudder. I can still see it as it was, though, and as it used to be. Sometimes I still miss the rocky bumps.

Those summers were beautiful, and now I drive back and forth across the road that I used to walk alone and with friends, and even though I've seen it a dozen times I'm still surprised at how big the sky looks every winter where the trees shed their leaves and the clear grey sky pushes through the branches. Despite all our best efforts to build houses into the empty lots and cut down the trees in front of them, Varney Road still looks the same. It will always look the same to me.