Roads need Travelers

I once wrote a three-word poem-

Roads need travelers.

The path to Thomas Merton's hermitage at the Abbey at Gethsemane was overgrown, or, at least I thought it was overgrown. In truth, I am certain now that I look back on it that I had left the path somehow. I got turned around in the heat of the day because I was thinking deeply on that long walk during a self-imposed silent retreat. One moment I was walking the well-worn trail, the next I was clambering over rocks and pushing aside thistles and branches. I could see a small sliver of what I thought was the way so I kept following it.

I didn't panic. I had plenty of sunlight. I knew I'd make it back to the monastery eventually, even if it meant turning around and giving up on finding the hermitage. I suppose I thought that visiting Thomas Merton's hermitage might give me some much-needed inspiration in my own writing. I'd hit a wall and I had to deliver my first book.

As I wandered that trail a thought came to me, "Roads need travelers." I wrote it down quickly in my journal when I stopped to get my breath, wipe away some beads of perspiration that came from the effort of my hike. I wrote it down and thought that one day I would make it a poem. The line remained in my head and on that mostly blank page for years, almost a decade actually. And I thought of that line every single day whenever I saw a road.

Roads need travelers because what's a road for if no one walks it?

The trail to Thomas Merton's hermitage disappeared on me, or, more likely I disappeared from it. Isn't that so often the case? The road doesn't leave us. We leave the road. And what I was walking that day was still a trail, a kind of road, kept by animal travelers, deer and raccoons, and possums, and squirrels.

Though I never made it to the hermitage, I did make my book deadline and published Nearly Orthodox in 2014, which is when I wrote my second three-word poem-

Books need readers.

All these years later I ponder that second poem often in my work as a co-founder at Legible. If you speak to an author as she is doing the hard work of creation she will tell you perhaps that she is writing first, for herself. This is true and good, and so often the case with the creative process. Some poets never show their work. Some songwriters never play their songs for other people. Some writers never try to publish. It happens.

But I maintain that creators create because we want to share something of ourselves. We write first for ourselves and then we show it to others because roads need travelers. What we write connects one place to another, one person. to another, one moment in time to another. We write roads and it doesn't matter if it's poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction. And when you, as the reader, pick up that piece of work and begin to read it, you become a traveler on that road.

Books need readers because it keeps the books alive. It keeps the path alive. It helps maintain and make clear the trail the author so carefully curated and created with their hands and feet and heart and soul. Books need readers like roads need travelers.

That is why I do what I do at Legible. When we set our core values two years ago, Sustainability, Accessibility, Integrity, and Beauty, we meant them and we show them in all we do. We are here to make Legible a destination, a place for travelers, for connections, for exploration, and for the joy of discovering new trails even if we think we've lost the path. Come and get lost in a book. We'll help you find your way home.