Farm road 3351 has a kind of magical air about it. This air or element is never easy to describe, and it could well be the result of a romanticized perspective. However, there really seems to be this element I have mentioned present. It is visible! Possibly it is just enough to say it is beautiful.

3351 seems to have been laid on a dividing line of some kind, for shortly after turning onto the road the terrain on both sides becomes noticeably different. To the left continues the land that has possibly grown familiar to you by now. It is joyful with simple beauty, like a simple song. Certainly this land still holds a rare, particular, and striking beauty. However, it can best serve as and introduction to the type of country we see on our right. The land on the right is rare and rolling. It is long, and it assumes the form or layout of a gently rolling bay. Large swells of cedar and oak, and that ground. This barbed wire fence in front of me says, "Here it is!

The land that needs to be looked upon, studied, and taken in." Your eyes easily glide over the soothing rolls of land, and you may attempt to give a particular spot special attention, but you find it hard. Because of the structure and layout of the area under your nose, you cannot keep your vision from running into a noble glide, that moves you cleanly through the bay to the horizon. The horizon even has peculiar qualities all its own, and one is that it always sits above its forefront with an intruiging and shy tint of majestic blue. I'm not sure if the horizon wants us to know it's there. The way it is set so far back, and even the color it has chosen for its clothing, make me think it would rather go unnoticed, or at least uncommented on.

This land brings back memories of times all through my lifetime. Some are personal and private, and others are maybe just a day that has a special seat in my memory for some reason or another. An example or two: I once left Fair Oaks on an early morning for Austin, when the land was still wrapped warmly in fog it had borrowed from lazy, low-lying clouds; the scene was majestic! The prized portion of land, this time on my left, was subtly, sweetly coming to consiousness after a much-needed night, and what I beheld left a stain in me. My driving turned to soaring, and I assumed the flight of a hawk, gently resting on a wave of wind, the hills passing me along toward

my destination. I felt inspiration rise up inside, as I have felt many times on these roads, and a pleasure so simply was attained. Making my most recent trip home down this road, caught up once again in the joy that comes from observation of this land, I did stick my head out of the window like a dog. I attempted to breath in the delightful atmosphere in effort to absorb it a little more somehow. The wind came in too strong, and I could not do it. I could not inhale. But there was no real failure, for I was already in the land, moving through it quickly and easily.