There are few more pleasant moments than a weekend cruise through the countryside. After lunch or brunch, it’s a pleasure to get into the car and spend a lovely hour (or two) of motoring down twisting and winding country roads, watch the light change as the sun moves through the sky, the trees flash by and familiar houses appear like old friends along the way. Every time you go, you notice something different – someone has built an addition to their home, a barn has been renovated, a structure has burnt down. A tree may have fallen, or beautiful lissom reeds may have sprung up alongside the road in an unaccustomed place. The novelty of nature’s theatre is laid out in front of you as the seasons transform the landscape, wet and alive and full of glorious scents in spring, quiet and drowsy and rich with deep flaming colour in fall, overexposed and white-washed under the summer sun and finally blanketed and mysterious in winter. The hills you know so well near your home, the trees and the creeks and streams are in constant mutation – a symphony of constant change and renewal. Your worries fade on a country drive – the feel of wheels grinding against the road, which you hear acutely when you turn off the stereo and let the car’s song surround you: it’s engine and exhaust note, its labours up hills and around corners and its ease as you cruise down a long, ribbon of straight side road. You feel you are putting distance between yourself and your cares. Traveling. Seeing some country and participating in that most human of desires – to move, discover, explore and journey.