Our Need to Wander

It helps define us. Me, too.

OK, so Stick to No Sports Tuesday got bumped again. Did you want Bengals postgame discussion, or Doc navel-gazing? Maybe we should just say one day a week will be devoted to pursuits unrelated to games. Regardless. . .

(TheHorse)

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I drove to Kentucky on Sunday and deliberately got lost. Two-seventy-five to 75 to just outside Lexington to Nowhere In Particular. Just up and down the ribbons of little roads that bisect horse country. I had no idea where I was. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Endless hills behind stone fences and the grand manor homes in the middle distance. Ancient trees like umbrellas over the road. Horse barns big as the Biltmore House, yet perfectly scaled to the rolling vastness that surrounds them. You can’t get found until you get lost. On this day, I took my time getting found.

Frequent Perusers of This Space might recall my affinity for day drives. Most are planned, Point A to Point B jaunts. Saturday, I took Crazy Chester to a trail at Rocky Fork Lake SP outside Hillsboro. An up-n-down mile-long loop through the forest, capped off by DQ soft-serves. Chester is a vanilla man, in a cup with the cone on the side.

Other days, the thrill is in the wandering. Sometimes, I just need to go somewhere.

Where makes little difference. I prefer places where the road wiggles and the landscape resembles an unmade bed. Ohio is fine, but a lot of it is plowed and contour-less. Indiana hasn’t charmed me, save the occasional Madison or Hanover College. But Kentucky. . .

Kentucky’s back roads swirl and dance. They’re as sexy as the stallions grazing in the pastures.

Midway to Versailles to Woodford distillery. The river road to Maysville to Pogue Distillery, high on a bluff and beautiful. The one-lane thunder road just outside Frankfort, to Castle and Key, then Glenns Creek for a bottle of Hamilton Dark, sugar cane-infused bourbon.

Is there a pattern here, Doc?

It’s only slightly intentional. Even when you’re purposefully lost, you’re going to find distilleries. It’s Kentucky, friends.

Humans are meant to wander. It’s how worlds were discovered. This country has been defined by wanderers. Native Americans ordered their existence by it. Summer camps, winter hunkers, buffalo trails. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to wander west and explore the lands acquired via the Louisiana Purchase. Two years and 8,000 miles later, they stopped wandering.

On a golden autumn Sunday, I’m nothing more than a modern-day Lewis and Clark. . .

Haha, Doc. . .

You know what I mean. We solitary folks relish the chance to dive into our heads while simultaneously seeking new Nowheres. Cruising the slender two-lane between Lane’s End Farm and downtown Midway isn’t just a repeatable pleasure for an occasional isolationist such as I. It’s a human necessity.

Now, then. . .

IF YOU TRUST FATE MORE THAN PITCHING,