Invisible Roads
by Janaya Young
here is a road just outside of town, east about ten minutes, that only goes down, both ways. If that doesn’t suit your fancy, you could head west out of town where there is a road that curves so much you think you must be driving in circles but at any point along the way if you stop and get out, everything you see will be new, in every direction. We also have a road that always puts the sun in your eyes and another where you are guaranteed to break down. We tried to put an auto shop out on that road but the tow trucks kept breaking down. We've wondered which came first to the desert, these roads or our town. It was puzzling how none of us could remember, not even the oldest. Though, I think the roads have always existed, plodded by stray goats and coyote long before we came here.
Of all the roads, my favorite cuts right through the middle of town, and no matter how you walk, it takes you to a stream babbling away. On its muddy banks grow the most gorgeous of grasses, thick and tall, and on the other side of the stream is the meadow where we bury all our dead.
T
Author's Note
This story was inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a book touching on memory, reality, and meaning. I wondered about the ways that the odd roads, paths and hiking trails I traverse in my mountainous desert home were like the cities Calvino describes. For me, the desert is a landscape that represents things I both love—wildness, beauty, resilience—and things I fear—desolation, rising temperatures and climate disasters. My love and fear for the future of the earth haunt and shape my writing much in the way these roads in the desert haunt and shape this town and its nameless speaker.
Janaya Young has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brigham Young University. Her writing is heavily influenced by the landscapes around her as well as familial relationships. She lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband and daughter.