No words that fit

LITTLE ROCK — I read that those of us who worry and scurry our way through life might as well be throwing away a lot of unopened gifts every day.

Life is not a race and it does pay to enjoy its beautiful melodies before the music concludes, perhaps even much sooner than we expect.

My friend Steve Turner, a trainer at the Fayetteville Athletic Club, recently cited a bit of Chinese wisdom, saying: “Like watching a clear stream flow around a boulder, sometimes there is no word to describe life’s most enchanting experiences.”

With those thoughts in mind, I recently shared a wondrous sight on three consecutive evenings in June. I still can’t find a word that adequately describes it.

I was staying with longtime friends Ron and Mary Patrick of Harrison when we sat out on their patio to chat a while before bed. As the hour grew late, we rose from all that chatter and laughter to call it a day. It was then that I noticed the phenomenon that surpassed anything the most skilled Disney technicians could create.

At the end of the patio that faces into a dark forest, the trees were alive with what had to be thousands of flashing tiny lights. There were so many lightning bugs interacting with their tails aglow that the sight caused all three of us to catch our breaths. None of us had witnessed a scene anywhere close to the display these little bugs were putting on.

And neither Ron nor Mary had noticed this summer show after years in their home.

The seemingly choreographed magic went on all night during the three evenings I stayed with the Patricks. During the day, I got a better look at the secluded little glen behind the trees where all those insects have been living and reproducing.

Something as fascinating as a gathering of bugs gave us each a memorythat will endure in each of us. Just think, it cost us nothing, and had we rushed off to bed, we’d have missed a melody worthy of Mozart.

Late-night friend

It was 11 p.m. on a Thursday in June. Laurie and I were headed back to Fayetteville from Little Rock along Interstate 40 and were near Altus when we rounded a curve and saw a lot of blue lights from police vehicles parked just ahead.

Westbound traffic was already at a standstill. We found ourselves idling about 20 cars back in what was rapidly becoming a very long line.

After 20 minutes and the arrival ofa “life flight” helicopter, it was obvious this was going to be a lengthy delay. I watched, now only about half awake, as the driver’s door on a semi carrying a load of new cars opened just ahead. The silhouette of a man climbed down fromthe cab and stretched into the middle of the empty westbound speed lane.

I could stand it no longer. Leaving our car, I strolled up and introduced myself to a black man, a veteran trucker named Boe Perkins, who was taking his load of new vehicles to Oklahoma. As time passed and other police and the tow trucks passed by, we learned from a man in a safety vest that there had been a car-meets-truck collision. Sadly, at least one person had been badly injured.

Standing with Boe on the dark highway, I learned a lot about my new late-night friend, who a half-hour earlier had been just another stranger behind the wheel of a vehicle headed in the same direction as we. He said he drives his enormous portable parking lot most often for General Motors, delivering new vehicles to dealers across the nation. On this trip, he happened to be hauling Nissans.

Boe, a smallish, friendly man of 57, has an 11-year-old daughter and plans on retiring as soon as he reaches 60. That will give him 33 years of driving trucks across the highways of the nation. During that time, he said, he’s seen his share of bad accidents. Not long ago, he watched an SUV cross the median in Tennessee and swerve just in front of him, then sail into the roadside ditch on his right, where it rolled over and stopped. He grabbed his fire extinguisher and hurried with another trucker who also had stopped to help the man trapped inside.

Not long before that, he’d watched a motorcyclist zip past him at a high speed, only to hear truckers two orthree miles ahead of him report over their CBs that a cyclist had slammed headlong into the back of a vehicle.

“I got there in another minute or so and his motorcycle was a tangled mess,” Boe said.

We talked on about families and life for another 15 minutes or so until the traffic ahead began to slowly pull forward. I shook Boe’s hand, wished him well and climbed back behind the wheel. Shortly afterward, we passed his truck and honked. He responded with three quick blasts.

It was just another of life’s unexpected encounters that will stick with me from now until life’s over.

Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.