Commutation: The Tripartite Road

I spent a lot of time in the past on the road either walking or riding, across the country, on the main highways or just drifting in the peace and quiet of the back roads with no destination and, finding that every road has its own spirit of evolution in a flux of constant change or lack of. Paths are blazed, then worn into place by much travel or taken back by nature when not leaving their ghost behind almost unnoticed.

As a child I remember back roads that were mud, that then became gravel. Later in my teenage years the county would pave them except, it didn’t take at first. The black top would crack, crumble, and break, coming up in chunks mostly where potholes already existed. I remember my cousin and I going out and tearing up the chunks that broke loose and busting them into smaller pieces. 

Of course, the county would return to patch the broken pieces and fill in where the potholes had formed. Sometimes with gravel and sometimes with more asphalt. They would leave behind tar seams that had been poured into the cracks and the lanes themselves would eventually gully out where the weight of vehicles would push them down leaving a place for water to pool.

The spirit of these roads became the depths of the layers that were poured on. The pioneers cut these roads with wagons, shredding the top soil, packing in the mud with hoof and wheel that only the heavy rains could loosen to a slimy slippery slope. Later generations put down layer after layer of gravel till it became one with the mud and the duality of the two could only be breached by weeds if abandoned. 

Generations after poured on the pavement forming the trinity of a soul traveled on and upon by any commuter vexed by the purpose of destination or, drifter, passive in the cusp of this civilizations entity of safe passage lost, somewhere between destination, and nowhere. 

Salutation Pending 

Johnny R Draper