Back Roads

 September 29, 2021

Back roads at night are a precious gift. Years ago, someone wrote a book about a back roads trip, describing it as “riding the blue lines,” ie. the roads on the map that unlike the highways, took their time getting from one place to another. If you get back far enough, there’s no lines on the road, no streetlights; just the dark winding ribbon threading through corn fields and woods. Tonight as I drove, I didn’t meet a single car until I got back on the main road. In the darkness illuminated only by the dim glow of my headlights, I was transported to another time and place, watching the rows of corn and the stars that winked in the sky above.

Every so often, I passed a house with lights in the windows almost beckoning me to stop and visit with people I don’t even know. The oldest farmhouses almost call my name, their unique dimensions looming behind rows of old maples alongside the road. Those trees were planted before my father was born, by people who envisioned a generation to come. They planted knowing they would never themselves taste the sweetness of the February flow that graces my morning pancakes. Old trees are a testament to faith.

You have to drive slowly on a back road, especially in the dark. This time of year, the deer have a way of suddenly appearing without warning. When that happens, speed is not your friend. Back roads at night make us slow down, which might serve us well if we drove them more often. But then I wouldn’t have the road all to myself, enjoying the quiet and marveling at the wonder of life itself. 

Robert Lewis Stevenson was a sickly young boy, growing up in nineteenth-century London. One evening at dusk, he watched a lamplighter walking down the street, stopping at each streetlamp to raise his wick and set the flame aglow. Years later, he described that event in his poem, “The Lamplighter,” writing that the old man was “making holes in the darkness.” On those backroads tonight, I saw those holes in the windows of homes where life was being lived, sometimes with joy, sometimes with sadness and pain. 

There is much darkness in our world; I only hope I can make a hole in it for someone who needs that flicker of light to take the next step. I hope I am planting spiritual trees from which I will see no fruit nor taste the sweetness of the syrup, but which nourishes and sweetens someone whose life is otherwise barren and bitter, whose road is dark and foreboding. If I have done that, I will sleep well tonight.