The roads are covered with golden dry straw.

I was born and raised in a rural area, where nameless village roads meandered through vast rice paddies stretching as far as the eye could see. My childhood was free from the hustle and bustle of city life and the glare of streetlights. Instead, there were clear blue skies with kites of all sizes fluttering in the sky, the cheerful sound of roosters crowing, and golden roads glistening after each harvest, covered with dry straw like unique paths that encompassed every complete memory.

Illustration: NGOC DUY

Harvest season is always a busy time, but also a time filled with laughter. Whenever the rice turns golden, the whole village becomes abuzz as if it were a festival. Adults head to the fields at dawn, their sickles and harvesters moving swiftly. Even though we children couldn't help much, we eagerly followed our mothers and grandmothers to the fields on those early mornings, still shrouded in mist.

In those days, after the rice was harvested, it was gathered, bundled into bunches, the straw turned over to dry, and then threshed using a hand-cranked machine. The threshed straw was then dried right by the roadside. The entire village road, stretching from the beginning of the hamlet to the edge of the fields, transformed into a soft, warm carpet of golden sunlight.

The straw, still damp with the scent of night dew, was skillfully spread out by my mother, waiting for the sun to rise and dry. When the sun shone brightly, the straw became dry, crisp, and light, gleaming with a golden hue like honey. After being dried three or four times under the bright golden sun like that, the straw was finally loaded onto a cart or ox cart and brought home to be piled into mounds.

Those roads were a magical world for us children. We ran, jumped, and played on the straw carpet as if we were lost in a fairy tale. Once, my friends and I gathered straw to make houses, piling them up like city kids playing with building blocks.

Some of the more daring children would take straw, wrap it around the trunk of an old banana tree or dry coconut leaves to make horses to ride, and hold bamboo sticks as swords, imagining themselves as ancient generals going to fight invaders. Laughter echoed throughout the small village, more boisterous than the sound of threshing rice or the engine noise in the fields at dusk.

The scent of dry straw is also a fragrance deeply connected to my homeland. It's the earthy smell of rice stalks, mingled with the sunshine and wind of the fields. It's also the smell of the harvest, of my father's sweat in the fields, of my mother's calloused hands weathered by years. Whenever I'm far away, just catching a whiff of straw somewhere makes my heart ache, as if a long-dormant memory has been awakened.

But now, those straw-strewn paths are just a memory. My village has been transformed. The village roads are now paved with smooth, clean concrete. Combine harvesters have replaced manual labor; the harvested rice is brought straight home. There's no more gathering straw to dry on the road, no more bright yellow carpet under the children's feet. Nowadays, not many children know how to play with straw anymore, because they're used to phones, television, and the magical world of the internet.

I returned to my hometown, standing at the crossroads leading into the village, but saw no trace of the past. It was the same road, the same path leading to the fields in the evening, but there was no longer the sight of people diligently harvesting rice, their faces drenched in sweat but beaming with indescribable joy at the bountiful harvest of heavy-laden rice stalks.

The vast, open sky stretched before me, leaving only my solitary shadow beneath the lamppost and the newly erected iron fence. I long to see golden straw covering the path, to breathe deeply the scent of dry straw in the midday sun, to hear the clear, innocent laughter of my childhood, running barefoot on the scorching golden straw carpet.

Although there is a lingering sense of nostalgia, looking back and seeing how my homeland has transformed, especially during the administrative merger of provinces and cities towards a new era of national progress, fills me with pride. I silently tell myself that the path is not lost, but simply that time has temporarily concealed it somewhere.

Because there was a time when country roads were not just pathways, but also places where the innocent dreams of children were nurtured, fulfilling the hopes of the hardworking, mud-stained villagers.

Leaving behind the memories of golden-strawed village roads, my heart opens with the hope that my homeland will continue to develop and prosper. May those straw-strewn roads, even if they fade away, remain as golden, fragrant, and warm as an unsettling sun in the recollections of countless generations born and raised in these beautiful, peaceful villages.

Song Ninh

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/nhung-con-duong-trai-vang-rom-kho-195634.htm