My grandfather is phenomenally gifted in the science and art of cartography. Countless hours of my youth were guided by one or another of his homemade maps, expertly scrawled on a Dairy Queen napkin or the back of a feed store receipt. With a Farm Bureau pen gleaned for free from some trade show, Grandpa’s dry, callused hands would create a befitting Long John Silver himself. Never mind that instead of buried treasure, the X usually indicated the hole in the water mainline, the best place drop a block of salt for the cows, a broken wire in the fence, or the cheapest place to fill up the gas cans with dyed diesel. Whether traveling on foot, horseback, four-wheeler, ’61 Massey or old pickup, Grandpa’s led me exactly where I needed to go. In the days before so-called smart phones and precision agriculture, Grandpa’s maps were the best GPS around.
It’s a good thing Grandpa is the da Vinci of impromptu maps, because, like most men, his verbal directions were, are, and likely always will be vague at best. Over the years, I learned to swallow my pride when asked, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” and reply with, “Actually…yeah, that’d be nice.”
If only I had exercised the same humility with that nice Washington County sheriff’s deputy last summer.
I make my home in eastern Idaho, but last July, I made a work trip out to the western part of the state. I spent the first part of the week at the annual meetings of the Potato Association of America, and then visited a couple growers near Wilder and Homedale. My wife and I decided to make a family trip out of it, and planned to, once my work was done, spend the weekend McCall, a gorgeous, mountain lake-adorned tourist trap situated a couple hours north of Boise.
We heard on the radio Friday morning that wildfires were threatening to close Highway 55, the route we usually would take. No problem; we’d just swing over to Highway 95 and come at McCall from the west. Well, the 2018 fire season being what it was, our plans were again diverted. About 10 miles north of Weiser, the police had the highway closed. We were instructed to either turn around and head back toward Boise, or take a circuitous route through the mountains.
This being unfamiliar country to me, I asked the deputy whether our little Hyundai—which gets killer gas mileage but was certainly not built for rough terrain—could make it through the hills.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
“All right, which way do we go?”
“Take this road until it makes you turn left, and keep on it for a few miles,” he said. “After while you’ll hit Bear Creek Road. Stay on that until you see South Crane. Turn onto that, and you’ll eventually get back to the highway.”
“How far before we hit pavement again?”
“It’s…a ways.”
Armed with such comforting, definitive phrases as “a few miles,” “eventually” and “a ways,” we set out. The atlas we had in the car didn’t say anything about any roads in the direction we were headed, but I wasn’t too worried. I figured my so-called smart phone would lead us through.
Well. For the next two hours, my phone would only supply us with the idiotic and completely unhelpful suggestion to turn around and head back toward Weiser. The gravel (if you consider baseball-sized rocks gravel) roads actually weren’t that bad, considering the geography. But our directions were, to put it kindly, a little hazy. After following several long ranch driveways to their dead ends, and a rendezvous or two with other lost, perplexed travelers, we did make it to the hamlet of Midvale and got back onto Highway 95. All told, it took about two and half hours, 60 miles of driving and four prayers to travel the 11 miles from the Mann Creek Country Store to Midvale. For good or ill, that little adventure en route remains one of the most memorable things from our weekend in McCall.
Whether it’s giving directions or receiving them, we all tend to get a little overconfident sometimes. It’s pretty easy to get lost, and usually both the director and directee are at fault. It’s a tall order to remember how much of what chemical to spray on which field on which day, or whether it was Truck No. 4 or 7 that needed a new wheel bearing last fall, or which weekend is the church potluck and which is your anniversary. Sometimes it’s even tough to remember what our priorities are until someone we trust spells it out for us in black and white.
Grandpa’s stash of trade show pens is probably the extent my inheritance, and when I get them, I’ll be thrilled. Hopefully I can harness some of their navigational magic to impart some decent directions to my own kids and grandkids.
I’ve already got a stack old receipts in the glovebox, ready canvases for my genetically acquired cartographic brilliance.