The end of a never ending road

The long road home

It's one pale stretch of gray pavement that mars the otherwise flowing green hills of northern Nebraska. Marching in a straight line from north to south, the road is the conduit through which the small trickle of travelers hurry through the most beautiful part of Nebraska on their way to somewhere "more important."
It runs from river to river, with only a hill or two to break the monotony. But the distance is short and the road is simply the most convenient way to connect two points rather than a grand display of the benefits of American infrastructure.
The road seemingly stops just beyond that last rise. It crests the valley hill then simply disappears. That's where the world ends.
Sure, there are towns that exist beyond the edge of the river but they are inconsequential. The road, for that matter, is of little consequence as well. While hours may go by without a vehicle traversing the gray expanse, the fields and gravel roads, invisible from the highway teem with life. Cattle wander from pasture corner to pasture corner, grazing slowly on the tall blades of summer grass. Mowers hum and buzz as they make sweep after sweep around fields slicing down the grass to dry before a rake sweeps it up to be baled, a little piece of summer that will be served during the long cold winter that inevitably follows the summer warmth. Children play and laugh in makeshift pools and creeks,the tumbling, rushing water cutting valleys into the prairie floor. All this activity happens in the byways and hedges along that solitary stretch of road far from the rush of traffic that plagues other parts of the state. Life happens away from the road, houses are built miles from the highway with dusty country lanes creating spidery maps over the fields.
Most locals' commute takes them out onto the road; mothers in their vans and suburbans cautiously making their way onto the highway to take their young children to the little schoolhouse, fathers in big pickup trucks lumbering away to tend to the cattle, teens zipping past on their way out of the hollow to the high school far from the straight road. But the road never rushes like the interstate, with cars ebbing and flowing over it like the river over rocks.
The road, a straight arrow to the heart of the heartland, leads the wandering children back again to the world from the abyss beyond the river. Just to follow that lonely, empty road will eventually bring the wanderer home.