My Detour (with pretty pictures!)

Along my route to my office--and the capital city--lies a major road construction project. It's a pig going and coming, because it's heavily trafficked, and on both sides of an intersection two lanes merge into one. Eventually there will be two lanes on both sides of the stoplights, solving the current problems. But in the short term, our hardworking Department of Transportation has worsened a really bad situation.

My clever spouse knows a detour and taught it to me. (By telling, not showing, so I got lost a time or two when first trying it.)

By turning off the vast, busy highway at a certain spot, one leaves the traffic, the congestion, the idiotic mergers, the cell-phone talkers, the tailgaters behind. Miraculously, it doesn't take any longer than the main highway. And it's a whole lot prettier. Calm-inducing, in fact.

The detour takes me through the woods, up hill and down dale, past farmhouses, barns, stone walls, fields of horses, upland views of the hills on the far side of Concord.

There's no traffic.

I mean, no automobile traffic. Not in the morning, not in the afternoon. Today, I did pass a geriatric walker on the way to my office, and on the way home a kid on a bike.

Heading back to the Lodge late today, I pulled over to photograph a stand of maples growing alongside a stone wall. The trees featured a mix of colour, the entire range of possible hues in this season of change--green, yellow, orange, red.





All the other bloggers in New England seem to have decorated their places with autumn glory. I decided it was time to join in.