The paths of Winterthur
Sometime when we were young, my Aunt Charlotte drove us out into the countryside here in southeastern Pennsylvania for what seemed at the time a grand adventure. It’s horse country just west of here - big stone barns, green, green fields and rolling hillsides, glistening creeks, small winding roads named after the old Quaker meeting houses that peek from meadow and woods along the way. At every crossroads, my usually very proper, go-by-the-book aunt would stop the car and look at us mischievously. “Which way?” she would ask, and one of us would get to choose - left, right, straight ahead - until I was absolutely certain we were lost for good. I don’t remember how often we played this magnificent game nor how far our wanderings took us. It may have happened only once for a few short miles, such are the vagaries of old memories - we extend and multiply them over time. But I remember that sense of adventure, Charlotte’s grin, and the power of being given a chance to choose. To this day, I think of my aunt on every Pennsylvania country road I take, no matter where I’m going.
John and I are beginning to play a similar game, although it is no longer Aunt Charlotte who gives us choices, it is our Tesla. Yesterday, we decided to drive out to Winterthur, one of the DuPont estates just over the Delaware border, and every time we’d deviate from the prescribed routing on our map, the car would obligingly reroute itself in answer to our whims. The magnificent countryside is still there, as are the Quaker meeting houses (though a shocking number of developments and townhouses are now tucked among the trees or pasted on the hillsides), and, as we enjoyed the chance on a hot day to follow the cool creeks, and drive under vast canopies of trees, I had a revelation about Aunt Charlotte’s country parlor trick: out here, everything is just over the next hill or around the corner, but there are so many ways to get there. No matter what direction we chose those years ago, she always had another way to get us home.
This isn’t true in California even now. Any day trip out of San Francisco has only one or two routes - and once you’ve chosen, you’re committed. There is no re-routing, no side trips along the way. Winterthur, by contrast, is only 17 miles as the crow flies from our new Pennsylvania house - a lovely destination, by the way, well worth the trip. But the myriad little roads, pikes and highways we could have chosen made getting there the adventure of the day.