Happy trails!

The Beatles took that long and winding road, Willie and Waylon went on the road again and Buford took the high road at Gettysburg. Pop icons and generals have the luxury and authority to take any old road they choose. Real people, like me, have their little baby feet set down on a path in their first year. Once they let go of their parents’ fingers, the road becomes their new gloriously uncharted territory. Along the way we can unexpectedly experience boulders rolled onto our path—not the movie set variety either but the real and heavy variety. Vistas open up on other roads, too, expansive and never easily forgotten. The road signs are many and varied: hidden, neon, Sharpee letters on poster board, foreign language, upside-down, ancient, cautionary, and wisely heeded.

The beauty of trodden roads is, in fact, their memory deeply hidden inside each traveler, so that a few bars of an old song can transport you to both Elton or Dorothy’s yellow brick road or to Marrakech or a hurried walk down the long hall of a hospital made slower by the weight of the bleeding child you’re carrying to the emergency room.

When I travel I have a soundtrack of music to keep me company, my own Musak but less annoying. My road traveled has been mostly uphill but usually with a manageable slant to ground range. I’ve preferred the roads along Idaho rivers, to grandmother’s house, on fresh snow, out of the confessional, and to the recovery room. One thing I can depend on is that my feet always take the road home.

Many roads were taken here on Sunday Scribblings.