I always want to see what’s at the end of roads. Not that I believe that the end itself is going to be terribly interesting, (and those of you who have observed road endings are sure to concur), but because I believe that the getting to the end of the road will enable me to witness wonderful things while I'm getting there, to be in places I’ve never been before. And I LOVE that feeling.
Sometimes my life seems so stagnant. (Well, more often than not, actually.) I drive on the same road the same distance at the same speed the same times every day, and some days I just want to turn my wheels an unexpected direction and break, if only for a short time, into completely unknown territory.
I want to drive to the end of the road I discovered the other day on my lunch break. It went past a newish sort of church, and then just kept on going past fields & stables, silos & horses. I wondered if, when I reached the final foot of asphalt, I’d end up in a place I knew, or if I’d be faced with one of those yellow arrow signs giving me a sharp choice: left or right, neither way known, making the direction hard to choose. I would want to take both roads.
Maybe someday I’ll have the time (and the gas) I need to keep going. I could end up in Payson, or I could go all the way out to West Mountain (or beyond) without passing a single landmark I knew. I could keep going to the coast, and then head north into Canada, and then east through it, back down south into the US, tracing and backtracking and networking all the roads together until they sat like an enormous web of interlinked places in my head.
I wonder if I’d come away different, if part of myself would wear off along the pavement, or if the dust of the road would become an indelible part of my skin.
I think—I’m almost positive—that I’d discover that there are no real ends to the roads, only continual change and beginnings, and that in the end, the main thing I’d find would be me.
(Sorry—I know this undercuts everything, but doesn’t that last sentence sound like something out of a Disney movie? Hahaha! Oh, I can be dull. :^))
3 comments:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And I, I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference.
Your last line sounds more like the Wizard of Oz to me. :)
I think roads, both familiar and unknown, are what you make them. I walk (sometimes run) the same path to the train station every weekday, but I still feel like I'm seeing some plants and people for the first time.
One of my favorite poems, Lindsay.
And Kim, that's a good point. So, instead of seeing the familiar each time I go somewhere, I should look for the unfamiliar, or the things I always pass by without really paying much attention.
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