The roads in Manitoba are really quite simple. Some of the roads run North and South, while the other roads run East or West. This is the entirety of the civil planning for the whole province. The roads that run in these serious directions can be paved or they can be gravel, but no matter the material the course is always steadfast. This can come in handy if you find yourself lost in Manitoba. If the road you’re on is heading East, maybe West, you simply drive the next mile until you find a road with perpendicular intentions. Turn South, and in some due time you’ll see the bright lights of a border crossing and you’ll know you have been saved.
Not all roads are this sincere. In the days before GPS, I made a habit of trusting roads that I didn’t know well enough. If I was driving and driving and then I found the intersection of County O, I would think that this is a road I remember from another travel, and this is a road that will take me back towards the North, where I belong. County O does indeed run North and South for a while, but after some time it starts to head East and West. Later, it runs Northeast and Southwest. This road is not steady and true like the ones in Manitoba, but it’s roads like this that cause great confusion for many.
Today, some people will pull from their driveways and onto the great interstate system. They’ll drive in various directions, though, admittedly, most of them will bear North. The route to weekend redemption isn’t always as clear as you’d think, and people will spend many hours, no, lifetimes, trying to work out the right route to the right form of bliss. If, later this afternoon, you find yourself driving, inexplicably, South, this is likely because of a routing mistake that had been made with the most noble of intentions quite some time ago. While the route to a better weekend is varying and twisting and somewhat complicated, it’s best to assume you must first head North.
I have clients from Saint Louis in town this weekend, and while they could have turned to the South, to follow the others to those great muddy lakes made so many years ago by dams and floods, they chose to turn North. They will be rewarded by clarity of water and clarity of purpose, and when it’s 82 and sunny tomorrow, that’ll be a bit of a reward as well. It is unclear to some which direction they should head, and so they set about exploring the roads that lead to the South and to the West and many to the East. There is no particular way to know when your chosen route is the wrong one, but if you see that sign up there, it’s a good bet that your car should be pointing the other direction, post haste.