Road Maps

Posted on May 23, 2003 in Book of Days Reflections Travels - So Cal

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Road maps.

I’ve traveled far on road maps. Through every state and at least half of the counties.

I especially love the blue-line backroads that run in jagged straight lines across the plains of Kansas and in sinuous curls — like phacelia blooms — over the mountains of California.

I’ve unfolded maps and turned them over to tour every National Park and around every scenic loop drive without seeing them at least once. I’ve sailed to Isle Royale on a paper hat boat and I’ve both camped and stayed in the lodge there by circling them with a pen. The Apostle Islands pray for the conscience of the nation to the south of there and I’ve prayed with them as I’ve circumnavigated them riding the tip of my finger.

Albuqueque, Miami, Cleveland — I’ve gone to them all and I have chosen the roads less taken that lead from them to suburbs and distant outliers that keep a healthy breadth of farmland and open country between them and urbanality.

Road maps give me a way of stretching my arms beyond the front door, a set of wheels that travel no slower than the eye.

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Writing about something you see everyday.