The Road Back Home
Ask me to name the one thing I wish I’d done.
CHANCES COME IN OUR LIVES, and chances go. Sometimes we make choices out of necessity, or responsibility, or because our gut says it’s right. Sometimes we rejoice in our decisions. Sometimes we regret them.
There’s little I’ve regretted in my life: it’s been long, and lucky, rich in both material things—not stupid, Elon Musk rich—but I’ve had everything I need, and a few things I simply wanted. Rich in the intangibles, too: the scent of a lover’s skin; the sight of snow geese winging north; the warmth of a cat curled on my lap. That first taste of coffee in the morning, and the smoothness of a single malt on my tongue, late at night. The way some words fit together in a poem or in prose. Music.
We lose things along the way; people, too, and I am sorry for some of those. Words I should have said, phone calls or emails I never returned. Some I could track down, maybe. Some it’s too late. But ask me to name the one thing I wish I’d done—or not done—and the answer will surprise you.
You’re thinking it’s the girl I didn’t ask out, or a lottery ticket I didn’t buy and the numbers came up, aren’t you? Because that’s what most people would say. You’d be wrong.
It’s black spruce country up where the Yellowhead Highway follows the course of the Athabasca between Jasper and Edmonton. The road’s busy, spring to fall, with tourists, come to see the mountains and the elk and maybe a grizzly bear or a wolf, if they’re lucky. But it was past tourist season, the scattered poplars golden against the dark needles of the spruce, frost on the grass and the windows of the truck in the morning. The sort of morning when the coffee tastes twice as good.
I must have left Jasper not long after dawn—I’m not foolish enough to drive the Yellowhead in the dark—because it was still early, the rising sun ahead of me turning the sky pink. I was planning to stop at the Timmie’s in Hinton for breakfast and a second cup of coffee. I like to break my driving day up. I had Stan Rogers in the CD player, and maybe that was part of it.
Just west of Hinton, there’s a crossroads where Highway 40 splits off from the Yellowhead to head north up toward Grande Prairie. I remember glancing to my left, making sure some too-tired trucker wasn’t going to miss the stop sign. And was hit.
Not by a logging truck, but by the purest pull I’ve ever felt in my life. It was physical, like I was a piece of steel and that road was magnetic. I had to force my eyes back to the highway in front of me, tell myself to keep driving east. I know I looked back, over my shoulder. Feeling the tug, telling myself no. I was due in Rocky Mountain House about noon. I had obligations. A settled life.
I stopped at the Timmies, ate my breakfast sandwich, drank my coffee and got a second one to go. In the parking lot I sat in the truck. Arguing with myself, fighting the call. It must have been ten minutes before I started the engine and swung back onto the eastbound lanes of the Yellowhead.
I still wish I hadn’t. I still wish I’d turned west again, driven the ten minutes or so back to Highway 40, made the right hand turn north. Been that tardiest explorer. Maybe all I would have found would have been the road back home again, like it says in Stan’s song. But I’d know.
Chances come in our lives, and chances go. I should have taken that one.
Stan Rogers singing ‘Northwest Passage’, the song referenced here:
Not a lot of history for this story; it’s mostly true. Except I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t driving a pick-up, but a rental car. Here’s the map showing the road I didn’t take.
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Wow! That was a great, brief story. I was right there making the same decision and regretting it just as hard. Well done!
Gorgeous write, Marian.