A Letter From Roads Less Traveled: Old Chico And The Man

I have parted company with “The Man,” and taken to the west’s magnificent back-roads… “Blue Highways,” as author William Least Heat Moon called them. In my dreams this is a retirement move, but realistically it may prove to be just another sabbatical.

I am a restless soul, blessed/cursed with a low tolerance for “noise” and familiarity. Wilderness and “change” are the only cures I’ve found. Being an unrepentant “drop out” comes natural. Though our god’s may differ, I am my preacher daddy’s son; wandering runs in our family. Unfortunately, that doesn’t fit well with time clocks and “Mondays.”

Old Chico, somewhere in Montana: It was only a couple miles so we thought it would make a good walk after breakfasting at Chico Hot Springs. A narrow paved road diminished to gravel and continued on to the Absaroka Mountain’s National Forest. It wound us up into lush rolling foothills clothed in Ms Autumn’s golden grass. Under a cloudless cobalt dome, with single digit humidity and unrestrained sun, our two-mile stroll became hard labor. I began to sweat like the Pulled Pork Pig I had for dinner last night... right before he was sacrificed on the altar of culinary delights. Finally, around a turn and up one last rise, there it was, Old Chico; perched above the expansive flaxen plain of “Paradise Valley.”

Slowing down, we patiently explored a single lane collection of olden clapboard houses, log cabins and rusting relics. Except for the murmur of a nearby creek, it was as hushed as a ghost town. I got all jelly-kneed with affection while taking in Old Chico; it put a wallop on my nostalgic soft spot. Something stirred inside... something I couldn’t quite put a finger on. This landscape, this place... I’ve seen it before. Deja vu, is that you? But I had not been there before... never even heard of Old Chico, nor his hot springs offspring down valley.

One by one we studied each residence... peeking through windowpanes of antique glass. Most of the cabins had vintage work trucks from the 40’ and 50’s parked out front; not one flat tire among them. This sense filled scene… with its lazy watered stream, pine scent, single dirt lane and peeling paint...  launched powerful childhood memories. I recalled when mom, dad and I paid visits to a friend with a similar cabin in a similar setting in Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains. I felt a sudden longing for the good old days.

I’m told one’s perceptions are shaped by experience, and there are few experiences that can match the power and persuasion of those formed in childhood. Old Chico epitomized my “age of innocence,” those early years spent growing up off the beaten path in 1950 something Arizona... listening to The Everly Brothers and Patsy Cline on an AM radio, and watching Gene Autry and Roy Rogers hogtie bad guys on our snowy black and white television. Ah, childhood... the touchstone age of Innocence. Is there anything more pure and honest? Alas, it is a fleeting purity nowadays as our children grow up younger and younger. Innocence lost; Jesus weeps.

Time is a prism; it has the ability to distort “history” via selective memory. The reds of Romance, golds of Idealism and whites of truth all get tossed in “the wash.” What comes out is pink; a little bit of each. Was my “good old days” childhood really as good as I remember?  Could children in today’s ipod gadget world possibly look back and think these are good old days?

To some this sounds like much ado about “rust;” I guess you had to be there. It’s just that Old Chico reminded me of an era gone by, one of innocence and trust. As a child I rode in vintage trucks just like those in Old Chico and thought them old then. It was nice to find an old west town with one foot in the past. Good Man, Chico.

You can’t stumble across back-road miracles like Old Chico and the inner awareness they inspire if you set out to. It only happens when one’s grip on “the reigns” is loosened, when the itinerary is used to start a campfire and the only orders followed are those from the heart. My “Lord’s Will” seeking parents had Faith, a compulsory prerequisite for the Art of Wandering. “Tomorrow will take care of tomorrow,” they would say. Freedom fell out of heaven and into their laps the moment they put “tomorrow” in God’s hands. It enabled dad to repeatedly thumb his nose at “The Man” and do the work of his Father. That’s how a family of five from Ohio ended up out west, chasing dust devils, dreams, and the seemingly elusive Will of God.

I might well have missed Old Chico, in a rush to get home from an all-too-short vacation, had not “The Man” and I parted ways. You see, “The Man” doesn’t approve of wandering; he likes to keep you on a short leash.