Shortcuts Sometimes Lead to Longer View

By Ken Wright, 6-04-06

	Caption: National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection

“Ken’s Shortcuts,” my wife calls them. As in, “Oh, no. Is this another one of Ken’s Shortcuts?”

These roads always seem longer, the ride rougher, the turns tighter than on our normal routes. They may not save time, but they always offer better scenery.

I’m not sure when I started taking them, but I think it was when I rode a purple stingray bicycle, long before I was issued a driver’s license. I used to cut through a piece of woods and splash through the corner of a swamp to get to the Lake Boone General Store. My friends took the road, and usually beat me to the soda and candy. They thought I was nuts. Now they own mountain bikes.

My father was probably an influence. Every now and then, on a Saturday, he would say, “Let’s get the truck stuck.” Simple as that. We’d pick up one of his friends, and the three of us would head out of town in my father’s two-wheel-drive 1967 Ford F250. He’d plug in a Tom T. Hall 8-track tape, and we would try to get lost in the hills. We’d roam around aimlessly, stalking the worst road possible, until he and his friend would get out and push while I stretched my leg and burned the clutch, trying to get the truck rocking.

That’s how I learned how to drive. I thought my dad was nuts. I still do; now, I own a four-wheel drive, and rarely push.

I do often roam around, though. And roaming, of course, was also the true purpose of those Saturday meanderings with my father: the goal wasn’t really to get stuck, it was to explore, to find new ways to new places, to find new ways to old places. The fact that we often got stuck says more about how much he liked the exploring, not the pushing.

Today I may not look always for the worst road possible, but I still regularly seek forgotten routes that nobody cared enough about to improve. Road builders today are too good at what they do. Cut-and-fill has turned topography into a backdrop, seen but not felt. Constant paving and road improving makes driving as effortless as watching TV, and it’s so fast and easy to get to places that we forget what lies between them.

But I’m on a constant search for those narrow roads that still circle around the smallest hills, that parallel the meanders of creeks and rivers, that have never had their personality smothered in pavement. And if this route connects two places I need to go anyway, then it’s a shortcut, even if there’s a straight, flat, wide, smooth, “improved” road connecting those two places efficiently and directly, and at great taxpayer expense. I’ll drive through old neighborhoods, up narrow valleys, over forgotten passes, and around mountainsides just to get a sense for the lay of the land, to see a new view, to relish the feel of the wheel in hand and elbow hanging out the window.

Driving will never be like walking, but when I drive I still want to sense the land I pass over. I want to feel like it took at least some time and effort to get somewhere. I want to feel more stimulated by what’s around me than if I were at home watching the Discovery Channel.

So on Saturday, when Sarah and I were driving along the route we routinely take to a place we frequently go, I suddenly clicked on my blinker, and turned left.

Sarah glanced at me. “Where is this a shortcut to?” she asked.

“To awareness,” I answered.
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