The Roads that Make Us

I’m driving a flat, well-maintained straight line of solitude through miles of Indiana cornfields. State Route 101 invites me to relax. So, I lean back into my seat, dangle one hand out of the window and hold the steering wheel gently with the other. The road ahead stretches out endlessly in front of me. It pulls me deeper and deeper into the future and encourages me to think big, expansive, everything-is-possible thoughts. I cross the state-line. I’m a Buckeye again. And, as I get closer to home along East Miami River Road, I enter into an entirely different conversation with the road and the surrounding landscape. The roads leading to home are ever-narrowing and marred with squiggly tar-covered fissures blistering in the summer heat. Their edges are crumbling with puzzle pieces of pavement desperately clinging to the clay beneath. Signs warn of hidden drives, hill-blocked views and deer crossings. Straightaways? Ha! They’re in short supply. And, those that exist are short-lived. The roads here are twisty and circuitous with hairpin turns. They demand that I show up, be present, pay heed. So, I shimmy in my seat, sit up and put two hands on the wheel. I take one curve after another. I climb and climb and climb. And, when I crest a hill, there’s a roller-coaster pause at the top followed by a stomach dropping descent. Long wavy deceleration streaks (from abrupt braking) cross over the double yellow lines then back over again. Sometimes multiple times. Their sudden appearance and sudden end raise all sorts of questions. First and foremost, “Was everyone all right?” Guardrails are bent, twisted, dented and damaged. And, beyond the guardrails, patches of Queen Anne’s lace, Chicory and Thistle bloom beautifully among sentinel-like solitary trees arrayed with mangled branches and disturbingly distorted hollows that inspired more than a few ghost stories when I was growing up. You cannot help but feel those trees passing judgment as you drive by. But, primarily and immediately along the edges of the road are densely tangled walls of vines and branches rising on both sides. They press in on you, arc over you. They stretch to reach, leaf to leaf, their kin on the other side. It is the woods. And, the woods want to heal this searing slice of asphalt dividing their community. They push up against the guardrails. Township maintenance pushes back with mowing, cutting and spraying. The frontlines of this struggle are yellowed and browning. But do not be fooled. The woods will win in the end. They know it. They menace these roads with a smile. All you can do is smile back. These roads, this landscape, they formed me. Growing up, whenever I wanted to enter into the larger world (and return from it), I had to travel roads like these. Dog Trot, to Taylor, to Wesselman, to Rybolt to Interstate 74. Zion to Buffalo Ridge to East Miami River to US 27. Shady Lane to Route 50. There is a hard-edged wildness to these roads. They shaped my perspective. They told me that I will have to fight and claw to carve out a space for my existence. Nothing will be given. I will have to work. And, if I want to hold a space for my existence, I will have to commit. I will have to show up every god damn day and push back against a world that aches to keep me in my place. This will be hard. I will have to struggle. And, this struggle will leave me worn; but, it will also leave me revealed. It has been years since I’ve taken these roads like I’m taking them now. That is, alone. And, as I continue to climb and climb and climb and take turn after turn, these roads recall me to my roots. I move from driving with two-hands on the wheel full-of-caution to only one, instead of breaking before the curves I break in them and, instead of driving like someone from out of state with Virginia plates, I recover myself and drive headlong into the curves with an easy-going ferocity.

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Thanks. – shawn