I spend most of my driving time on Interstate 80 and paved roads in and around Brookville and DuBois.

We live among less well-traveled paths.

Each Monday for the past month, I have taken some of them as a volunteer driver for the Meals on Wheels program in Jefferson County.

This drive is a refreshing reminder of how close to nature we are in this region. It is also a reinvigorating chance to chat with people who like to talk as much as I enjoy yakking, even if neither of us hears all that well these days.

“You do need to get out more,” my wife has said, non-stop, since my retirement from full-time work three years ago.

This comes as something of a shock, since I really enjoy listening to myself talk. She, however, gets unreasonably upset when I start talking about Uzbekistan while she is measuring out cups of flour.

“Three … four … fi — What the HECK do I care that Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan? Where WAS I? Four or five? You need to get out more often … like NOW!”

Tsk. I was just broadening her education. That hardly warrants being threatened by a madly waving flour sifter.

But I took the hint.

What I had not realized is how remote some dwellings are, even if they are close to town in “as the crow flies” miles. My delivery route never gets more than 10 or 12 miles away from Brookville. But I only took my car once. Even in autumnal nice weather, the dirt roads and lanes suggest that my pick-‘m-up or a SUV, with higher ground clearance, are desirable.

I was also sobered by the physical circumstances that limit the activity of some of our friends and neighbors. A disability quotient is part of the eligibility requirement to get a weekly cardboard box about the size of two or three shoeboxes, and its contents of five flash-frozen meals.

The recipients deserve their privacy, so I won’t go into details.

Let’s just say that I am humbled by the cheerful greetings I receive from these people, even as they groan or sigh at the effort needed for them to just get up or sit up and say hello.

The conversations, though short, are delightful.

We don’t talk about Trump, about Hillary or about Gary Johnson. I am not trying to sell them anything. I am not even bringing them the medical assistance that some of them clearly need; my arrival does not mean “Pain.”

So we grin and chat a bit about the weather. I set the box where I am told, sometimes opening in on request. Then I leave.

I had thought I knew the roads hereabouts. Buzard Lane and Humpback Road are eye-openers, however. They wind down steep hillside surfaces mostly of slick clay and slippery rain-wetted leaves, with occasional overlays of gravel.

“How do you get down here in the wintertime?” I sometimes ask.

“You don’t,” is the stoic response. You set up in advance with firewood and food, hope it lasts, and pray you won’t need to get out until the getting again becomes possible.

I understand why they stay.

My mother’s house was home for a half-century. She and Dad scrimped and saved to buy it. They raised me there. Every room, every step down to the cellar or up the pull-down ladder to the attic, was rich in memories and warm with familiarity.

Mom wouldn’t leave until her final trip to the hospital at age 80.

These folks I meet on Mondays are similarly rooted.

I won’t have that problem. Our house has been home to me for 12 years. I like it well enough, but its walls don’t evoke the soft echoes of Christmases past or the high-pitched chatter of pre-teen children. When the time is right, I’ll move.

Other folks won’t.

So I meander on and off the asphalt, a half-circle through Corsica, Sigel and Hazen, then return to the Heritage House senior center in Brookville to chat through lunch with a few dozen people who, of course, are much older than I am — he said, wistfully. I don’t think of myself as a codger or a geezer, but these lunchtime companions speak my language, in terms of decades experienced or endured.

In Jefferson County, a call to 800-852-8036 will yield more information about the Meals on Wheels program, for interested volunteers and for people who might benefit from being clients.

I get reimbursed for mileage. I’ll take it. Those roads are likely to soften up a shock absorber or two.

Drivers are unpaid volunteers, or so they say.

But I find myself enriched nonetheless. I sometimes feel gloomy about knees or shoulders that don’t work as they once did. It is hard to sustain that self-pity when face-to-face with people whose ailments make me seem like a spring chicken but who are more cheerful about life and living than I am.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.