ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 12, 1996 TAG: 9609130180
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Saturday night, at a park in Northwest Nebraska: Our friends Jim and Cathy are riding cross-country on bicycles - for their honeymoon. They are crazy, I think, but that's another story.
The postcard they send us, postmarked Merriman, Neb., says they've logged 2,349 miles since leaving Seattle, having ridden, camped and canoed among buffalo and rattlesnakes.
``The deer and the antelope were actually playing,'' Cathy writes. ``For good measure, the coyotes howled over the hill.''
Saturday night, near a park in Northwest Roanoke: It's our six-year anniversary. Jim doesn't need his truck out in Nebraska, so we have borrowed it, a wonderful old Ford with one of those three-in-the-tree gear shifts.
Our son, Max, is in the middle, strapped into his car seat, repeating over and over: ``I am a big boy. This truck is fun.''
We eat pizza from a box while my husband hoists coyote-size rocks into the truck bed. Left over from the excavation, the rocks appeal to both his inner child and his inner cheap because:
a.) They require a truck.
And b.) They're free.
Out in Northwest Nebraska, Jim and Cathy pedal among the bison, switching campsites night after night. An adventure of a lifetime - make that a dozen lifetimes - it's a honeymoon composed of two parts magic, one part misery. If they can make it through this trip, everyone tells them, they can definitely make it through marriage.
Judging by the postcards, they're cruising through both.
Here in Roanoke, while pilfering through a red-clay excavation site, I unearth the true secret to a happy marriage:
When life gives you rocks, make a rock garden.
This summer I have become the poster child for Picture Perfect plant nursery. It all started this spring, when we cut down the scrubby hemlock tree that had been wreaking havoc with our neighbor's gutters.
``Plant flowers around the stump,'' my gardener friend Elena told me, and then promptly delivered two bushel baskets of separated bulbs from her crowded beds.
Not wanting to kill her babies, I obeyed.
They grew. I was astonished.
Another gardener friend, Betsy, soon showed up with a tray full of plants she'd nursed from seed to seedling. Not wanting to commit the same sin I'd committed last year with her agricultural offering - murder by neglect - I even watered and fertilized them.
They grew as well. My favorite Southern expression came immediately to mind: Garden Peas!
I knew I was hooked on this gardening thing when I woke up restless at 1 a.m. a few weeks ago - and soon found myself planting ground cover under the light of the full moon.
My husband, however, is not a gardener. He has seen the checkbook, noted the spending patterns.
But he does like to borrow trucks.
``I want to build you a rock wall for a new flower bed,'' he'd announced on the eve of our anniversary. It wasn't exactly the candlelit dinner I'd envisioned. But I couldn't resist.
We raid the rock pile. It feels mildly subversive, like we've just ridden into a country song.
The next morning my husband jumps out of bed and goes to work on the wall. The testosterone level is 6 feet high and rising.
By the time I wake up, my new flower bed is finished. And it's beautiful.
If I could reach Jim and Cathy, I would tell them all this. I would thank them for the use of their truck and remind them how much I admire their sense of adventure.
Six years ago, when we had more time and fewer commitments, we might have done the same thing, I'd tell them. I wish we had.
But for now, we're too busy building our nest to soar.
Which is what marriage is all about, I'd tell them. It's about finding adventure anywhere you can, whether it's in a park in Northwest Nebraska or in a pile of red-clay dirt.
It's about celebrating the common ground found in a flower bed, a box of pizza and two big boys who think riding in a bumpy old truck with three-in-the-tree is the perfect night on the town.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Robert Lunsford. color.by CNB