Eloquent was the minister's climax:
"Beware of ruts. They're hard to climb out of; and when they
get six feet deep, we call them graves." But though heartily
agreeing, I found my vagrant fancy running off along some
very pleasant and rather exciting ruts I have been in.
One could not truly be called a rut; it
was "a cut." We called it "The Old Railroad"-a depression as
wide as a single-track railroad that led a half mile or so
through the woods near my childhood home. A half century
earlier a railroad had run through it to the site of a
vanished pioneer town. Once it had been an open gash in the
earth, filled with the whistle and clang of locomotion.
Later all that was gone, and the cut was filled with more
wild flowers, shrubbery, and birds than any other locality
around.
A path through it was our favorite Sabbath afternoon
walk. "Let's go to the old brickyard," we children always
proposed, meaning: "Let's wander along the old railroad cut
and see what new flowers have bloomed in a week. Or maybe
the blue eggs in the robin's nest have hatched. Or we'll
catch some 'prink birds' [towhees, named by us from their
call] scratching in the leaves like chickens. Or the haws
are ripe [if it was toward fall, we would find several
delicious varieties]. Or we'll find the rabbits playing tag
and leapfrog."
There was never a dull moment in a saunter
along that rut. Then we came out on a miniature "badlands,"
the eroded yellow clay cliffs of a long-disused brickyard,
its ditches cutting finally down to the Lake Michigan sands.
From that diminutive "Grand Canyon" the shore curved off to
a crescent that even "the blue Vesuvian bay" of poetry
cannot equal in my memory.
In the nearly half century since I last
trod that rut, I have seen some "cuts" in human hearts
leading to abandoned homesites and dream enterprises which
through God's restoring hand have become lovesome places
filled with all sweetness and graciousness.
The other rut was a guiding way.
Vacationing on the Cumberland Plateau, I wanted to go to the
"gulf"—native name in Appalachia for vast, wooded,
blue-misted depths where the streams cut their way through
the mountains down to the valley of the Cumberland, the
Tennessee, or another river. It was to be a three-mile walk
each way, through woods so dense as easily to mislead one.
"You won't get lost," said my hostess. "Follow the deepest
rut in the logging truck trails. It will take you to the old
'highline cableway for hauling logs up from the bottom of
the ‘gulf.' You will get your best view there where two
'gulfs' meet. Then just follow that rut back to the
highway."
Space forbids even listing what I found
of plant, bird, animal, and insect life along that rut, to
say nothing of the sounds and fragrances of the wonderful
woods. There was so much that was enthralling that when at
last I reached "the gulf," my watch told me I dared spend
only a few moments enjoying the view if I would return
before my friends became uneasy. So back I must hasten,
concentrating on following my rut. Such a bewildering array
of side trails! I had not been aware of so many until I must
choose my way quickly. But always there was that one deeper
rut that guided me at every junction. On I pressed toward
the mark-home, rest, and refreshment. Fatigue wore me down
till I was nearly fainting. But I held my eye to that rut
and stumbled on. Then-oh, joy!-my name shouted by a friendly
voice, and my hostess's car to take me the rest of the way.
Life is like that. A deep rut lies
through every tangle of circumstances, a rut stained red by
the Feet that beat it out. Though it is six feet deep in one
place, it couldn't hold those Feet. No more can it hold
ours, when we follow those Feet. And the greatest thrills
this side of heaven lie in and beside that rut in knowledge
and service. Youthfully loitering along that rut, or
stumbling westward in the fatigue of age, we find at the end
the shout of the Archangel and the chariots of God—if we
follow always that rut, the one we ought not to climb out
of.
I recall as a little girl seeing
flocks of these butterflies sipping water from puddles in
ruts along an old dirt road.
