It struck me recently that we become so caught up with all the myriad things that make up our individual lives that we are often unaware of how so many pieces in that maelstrom are operating almost automatically for us like signposts or landmarks that speak to us silently but vividly letting us know when we’re on course and when we’re not. One of the early ones for me, growing up on West Dem, was on my bicycle trips from our house in Vreed-en-Hoop to my mother’s Barcellos family home at Hague, some eight miles away. Coming back home after a Hague visit, on my Rudge sports model, a sign-post for me on the red dirt road was the twin concrete strips starting at the wide turn at Crane that let me know I was only a mile or so from home. For a youngster like me, 11 years old and riding alone, that was my security signal – almost home. I doubt anyone else saw the concrete strips that way, but that’s how it worked for me – a landmark. We have these things operating in our lives, at the back of our minds somewhere, fully on automatic, steering us on in total silence.
