I never understood the description of a road cutting into the earth until I was in Alabama.
We were on the downward dip of highway looking up at the ascending rolling hill. The earth appeared to be moving underneath us.
A giant knife must have come down from the sky and sawed the trees like a pie cutter cuts into cake and takes a slice away.
From down in the valley, looking up at the rolling hill in front of us, the road was the plate, and those rolling trees the cake. Like a wedge of cake taken from the earth were those trees that met the road.