middleblog-a suburban babble brook book

An Aside: The Old Roads

Recently I've been travelling several towns over to visit an old, long-lost high school friend.  The first time, I took the highway and another, smaller route the entire way there, but I was sure there was a shorter way.  So I started exploring, and finally hit upon an old, winding road that shaved easily 15 minutes off of my time.  I am always charmed by these antique ways, winding and wending their narrow ways past old farmhouses, bogs, and through great fields and pastures. There is a road nearby, incidentally, that has the curious sign "Ancient Way" at its beginning...and I can't help but wonder if it's an old Indian trail that became a road, to justify such a sign.  There is romance on these old roads, history that whispers for those who will listen, the tale of trails taken through forests, rutted dirt wagon tracks that bore early settlers from one to another, early tar tops that bore the coughing, rattling, temperamental first cars in slightly better comfort from town to town.  I prefer the "back roads", which are the old roads, to the impersonal highways that hurtle us blindly through towns and history.  I'd rather take my time and have a muse than rush frantically along.