The A827: On Roads and Rivers
It was just a sign on the highway: The Scottish Crannog Center near Pitlochry. My son and I, being partisans of pre-agricultural societies generally, took the exit.
Very quickly the attractions of the road – the A827 – displaced anticipation of the attraction itself. The road follows the river Tay up to its Loch, through a low-shouldered river valley, conifers mounting up the hills on either side and a lush thick of waterside deciduous along the road. The road veered near enough the river to remind us that it was an interloper, that its way had been cut by water sometime toward the end of the last ice age.
Stone circles can be seen from the road itself, if a keen eye is kept: Croft Moraig and Lundin Farm stone circles underscore the ancient ways this road follows.
Byways: In grad school, over late night drinks with fellow-travelers, I discovered (or proclaimed – much the same thing in grad school) myself to be enamored of potential, more than anything else. I was pretty excited about what things might become – more so, often, than what they were. A young person’s fancy. Not so great for relationships, but it made me a connoisseur of roads and pathways that I’d never travelled.
And if they were tree-tunneling, river-wending, all the better. My favorite roads tend to be riparian.
And if they were tree-tunneling, river-wending, all the better. My favorite roads tend to be riparian.
Tributary Paths: When I was young and the world was very small, none of my sacred pathways were bounded by destinations. My first such way was a small riparian trail in the fields behind my childhood home in Fremont, California. Cattle grazed on the prickly hillsides, and my sister and I dreamed of what might lie on the other side of that small creek (no more than a yard or two wide, and probably much less in Summer). The trail was unmapped, and we weren’t allowed to go more than a few blocks away from home, so it was very easy to imagine the strange destinations and shadowy byways that the trail led to.
The fields behind my childhood home in Fremont California. Above, the creek that makes possible the green.
(I later found out that the trail is now called Saber Cat Canyon Trail; it’s still there, though it’s paved over and carefully maintained by the Park Service; townhouses perch on the hillsides where cows used to roam.)
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Where destinations are hazy, shrouded in mist or myth or childhood, the roads themselves become ensorcelled. If I’d known what to expect when I turned off onto the A827, my experience of it would have been different. It’d still have been beautiful, but set in a frame of my expectations.
The High Road: I used to fantasize about the Magician's book that Lucy finds in C. S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which presents her with a livestreaming map of anywhere and everywhere, infinitely zoomable. Such a book seemed somehow as wrong as it was appealing.
And so it’s with a little trepidation that I include this link, allowing you to experience, in a small and VR-ish way, the A827 itself. Google streetview has its own magic, certainly, though not yet achieving the feats that imagination can. [Click on the pic to drive that road]:
And so it’s with a little trepidation that I include this link, allowing you to experience, in a small and VR-ish way, the A827 itself. Google streetview has its own magic, certainly, though not yet achieving the feats that imagination can. [Click on the pic to drive that road]:
(My son and I used to play a game, standing over the Bay Area on a huge map of the world painted on the blacktop at his elementary school: smoosh your thumb over the spot where Berkeley would be, and feel as your shoulder muscles tauten when you look up, half expecting a giant thumb to approach you from the sky…)
Some of my favorite roads:
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- The Great East Road, leading from Bag-End to the Misty Mountains: best contemplated from a Hobbiton porch. Google streetview hasn't mapped it (yet), but if you must travel it, you can do so in LOTRO:
Roads are like rivers, and they have their own tributaries and their own currents. As Bilbo knew when he warned Frodo: You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
Roads are running water. And just as all streams find their way to the sea, all roads lead everywhere and away.
Roads are running water. And just as all streams find their way to the sea, all roads lead everywhere and away.
Bilbo's Best Road Trip Song:
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!
Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
The world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!
Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
The world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!