EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's LETTER The road to my boyhood home

This is a narrow lane. It's a mile long. And it dead-ends at the Ringling property, a large piece of land punctuated with stone monuments that lionize Henry E. Ringling, the son of one of the five brothers who started the circus a few miles away. When my parents built our home, it was the only home in the subdivision. On paper, that's what it was called. A subdivision. But on the ground, it was just a string of oneacre lots along a rural gravel road. Subdivision was an overstatement.

There's hyperbole in the name, too: Indian Trail Parkway. Rock Creek, in D.C., is a parkway - a thoroughfare landscaped by fairway mowers. The road that takes me home isn't like that. Instead of manicured berms, it shows off a more natural beauty. A supermodel without makeup. It runs along a river and through a woods, where oaks and maples change color with the seasons and form a canopy overhead, like the tree tunnel at Point Reyes, but instead of cypress, the ceiling is made of hardwood. It's more than just a road, though. It's a scrapbook stuffed with some of my best memories.

Like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, my brothers and I roamed up and down that road, and the shoreline that it follows. We built tree forts and river rafts. And popped wheelies with our three-speeds. We found arrowheads and spearheads buried in the sand. Once, we found an old wooden rowboat washed up on our beach. The river delivered all kinds of treasures another man's garbage - especially in the spring, after the snowmelt. I knew it was a good place to grow up, but I appreciate the allure of Indian Trail even more with hindsight.

engineer's survey stakes rather than a wandering cow's sometimes temperamental peregrinations.

The image, which is anchored by a yucca preaching from the ditch, was made by Esther Henderson. A few months later, in the final installment of The Road, we ran a photograph by Barry Goldwater. It shows a muddy passage occupied by an army of sheep. “The roads wander in aimless fashion through the limitless land of the Navajo,” the caption reads. “They are romantic ribbons that tie lonely trading posts to the outside world. And they are the arteries of travel for visitors who wish to get away from the outside world.” That's what we do this time of year. We look for arteries and escape routes, because the kids are out of school and the weather's nice. And because we need a break from the gridlock and the monotony of routine. Chaucer called it “a vacacioun from other worldly occupacioun.” That was 700 years ago. The necessity hasn't changed. And the need is universal. Only the roads are different.

I asked a few friends about the roads they go to when they need to get away. Ellen, who lives in Munich, heads for the Deutsche Alpenstraße, a spectacular scenic drive that weaves through the Alps. Annie, in upstate New York, says her getaway is Jay Mountain Road, a narrow wooded lane not far from Lake Placid. Claire Curran, one of my favorite photographers, is fond of Forest Road 116 in the White Mountains.

“The charm of such roads is their isolation and the surprising places to which they lead,” Raymond Carlson wrote in The Road, a monthly installment that ran on the inside back cover of this magazine in the mid-1940s. It was short-lived, but excellent, and featured a large, four-color photograph with an extended caption.

“The road this month,” our editor wrote in April 1946, “is a gravel road loafing along its merry and carefree way across the desert. In engineering terms it is called a 'secondary road,' part of a vast network that connects isolated ranches, mines, farming areas and communities with the smart, slick, modern primary road system of Arizona. A secondary road, not hardsurfaced, is well ditched, well maintained, and it follows the It doesn't matter where you're going, as long as you're going somewhere. But you can't just take a trip, you have to make a trip. You do that by creating memories along the way. A conversation with a gas station attendant, chocolate milkshakes at a family-owned diner, short hikes to hidden meadows, peanut butter sandwiches on a wayside picnic table, “I spy with my little eye” ... that's what the journey is about. Those are the souvenirs worth collecting.

“The road is life,” Kerouac said. Early in my life, the road was a rural road. The road I live on today is different, but also inviting. It's an urban street, well manicured, that runs along the base of Camelback Mountain and dead-ends at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Last month, a mile of it was shut down for repaving. The day it reopened, I was driving home from school with one of my daughters.

“What do you think of the new road?” I asked with a clueless father's enthusiasm.

“I don't know,” she said. “I mean ... it's just a road.” Someday, maybe, she'll see it differently. I hope so.