Road Notes

Investments In The Months Ahead & The Roads Behind

The staff took no notice of the automatic door opening and the first customer of the morning, me, walking in. Whatever the conversation involved that they were engaged in, it took precedence over everything else for the time being, so I snuck past them and down into the aisle with all the cool pens and notebooks because, as it was, I needed some new pens.

What I don’t need is more notebooks and while I swore it to myself that I would not, under any circumstances, purchase another notebook, that all went out the window when one caught my eye. Then there was a simple idea that might put a new one to use; keep it in the vehicle at all times, and write some notes while on the road this summer.

That, if nothing else, could be a loaded endeavour when you take a moment to consider the fact that most of my days involve some sort of travel by vehicle to one place or another, especially for me. When you also consider the fact that I’m a bit of a sneaky fuck who won’t hesitate to hop in the jeep and just go to any place within half a days’ drive, if for no other reason than to see what that place (usually some tiny rural town or body of water) is all about, the slope then becomes that much slipperier.

But every road and every mile becomes a passage in age-old story of getting from point A to point B, and until recently it hadn’t really struck me as a viable source of material to write about. Wash away all the outdoorsy stuff that is the usual well of inspiration - that’s more than likely because it’s a comfortable source - and what you’re left with is a inexhaustible well of storytelling that unfolds right outside the windows of that car, or truck, or whatever.

So I buy the notebook, and the pens, and once I’m back in the Jeep, I take the black pen out and write on the spine of the new notebook “Road Notes” before placing it in the center console.

Later that same day I’m looking over the calendar for June, July & August. There’s excursions lined up for all of those months, some far away and requiring a full day of sitting behind the wheel watching endless miles of landscape shifting from one extreme to another roll past, while others only require a couple of hours of driving on mostly empty and scenic highway, but all of them subject to the lines on the pages of Road Notes. Looking even further, the end of September has a trip to New York lined up, and October involves three or four days in Ohio, too. Things are looking good.

It’s not as though I haven’t written about various aspects of being on the road before this. Far from it, in fact. But what has happened is that there has been a growing sense of familial comfort to setting out solo to a destination, whether it’s unknown in the moments after I leave the driveway or not. Far from a feeling related to cabin fever or anything like it, but what I like to believe the deal is, is that there’s a part of me that is predisposed to wandering - a terminal case of wanderlust is how I often refer to it - and sometimes it’s a condition that I can fight, for logistical and financial purposes, and other times I become a slave to it.

The road does feel reminiscent to the feeling of home, and while a person can live in a perfectly good house with a perfectly loving and caring family, it doesn’t mean that the house will feel like “home”, and make no mistake about it, home is a feeling as much as it is a place.

Why the road, though? …

That’s the question that the restless soul can’t quite answer. Not yet, anyway.

So this all disolves into a cacophony of staring at a certain stretch of road that cuts from one little tiny road sign to another, running east to west through high hills in the Algoma district of Ontario, because I’ve got the urge to go again and this notebook isn’t going to fill itself. In the middle of the night fueled by dill pickle seasoned popcorn and a hazy IPA called “A Van Full Of Weirdos”, I do a count of all of the creeks from the point of where the road starts and work all the way across to where it ends abruptly at what on a map appears to be some sort of outpost but in reality is a fishing resort. I know this from prior experiences.

The creeks that I’ve been looking at are tumbling trickles and slow rolling ribbons through the hills on their way to Lake Huron, or a tributary that will eventually flow into it. The likelihood of all of them being home to one species of trout or another - in this case, almost certainly rainbows and brook trout - is high. So are the chances that they haven’t seen much in the way of a fly gear.

But getting there will take roughly twelve hours, require a hotel room and or camping. Gasp! Dare I say both!? It won’t involve any need to tie more flies because the fly boxes are full and untouched trout are not usually picky. Gas prices are…sort of thinking about dropping, I guess. There is a high price to pay for in the pursuit of tiny, brightly coloured fish these days, though I’m told that it never used to be this way.

That same stretch of road way the hell up there in Algoma is a hot bed for black bears, so much so that I’ve never been on that road or hunted/fished the surrounding woods and not seen at least one bear while doing so. It’s sort of a weird places, geographically. You’re driving through the hills before dropping down into a low plateau-type of place that I refer to as “The Flat”, which is a concentrated haven for species like Ruffed Grouse, Snowshoe Hares, and everything else that you would expect to find in the sub-boreal forest. It’s a sandy area smothered with wild raspberries and blueberries, stunted pines in former logging cuts, and a river that looks the part of a western trout dream.

And, it’s pretty much all public/crown land, too. This is, for obvious and selfish reasons, a good thing.

But there are also all those miles, the echoing landscapes, variables of which to think about but not worry too much about. Mennonite bakeries, podcasts, wide open skies, crystal clear rivers, construction, construction, construction…all the slowdowns and every single wonder in between. There will be a lot of them.

But then again, not all roads evoke inspiration and curiosity. It has to be the right kind of road winding through the right kind of places, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s why those long, lonely stretches of Highway 17 are so rewarding to travel down. Well, for me at least. Not everyone enjoys the Trans-Canada Highway, and I’ll be the first to admit that there are portions of it that completely suck, but that’s the nature of the beast.

Highway 17 could very well be called The Highway of Broken Dreams because the longer that you drive on it, the more abandoned businesses that likely were the very foundation of someone’s hopes and dreams at one point in time or another. There’s lot of those just north of the city of Sault Ste Marie, and stand as the skeletal remains of another time, and sometimes it’s difficult to imagine such a place that, at one time, may very well have been so full of life.

And, from here on out, the book of Road Notes will be there every step of the way, for reasons that perhaps aren’t entirely clear just yet, but no doubt will reveal themselves after the right amount of miles have been reached.

But then again, maybe there really hasn’t been any dispute about the cold comforts of being on the road, barreling down some lost highway and wondering about all that you’re passing by. There’s a foggy air of mystery out there beyond the windshield, and there’s never enough time to explore it all, is there? Eventually one day there will be a road trip planned with no intended destination. The vehicle will be aimed in one direction or another, and we’ll just go, and I’ll remember that trip for the rest of my life.