Country Roads
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, Mountain Momma
Take me home, country roads
John Denver, from “Take Me Home, Country Roads”
Country Roads
Childhood memories run deep. Growing up in Minneapolis, my family often headed north to explore the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. I vividly remember taking the back roads, especially in a time when President Eisenhauer’s dream of an interstate highway system was just beginning to be realized.
The further north you traveled, the more rustic it became. Grand Marais, near the Canadian border on Lake Superior, was a sleepy little town. From there, you could drive into Minnesota’s wilderness on the Gunflint Trail, a dirt road.
John Denver’s 1971 hit, Take Me Home, Country Roads, is now one of the four official state anthems of West Virginia. But the inspiration for the song had nothing to do with West Virginia.
The inspiration struck while songwriters Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff were driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland. Danoff stated, "I just started thinking, country roads, I started thinking of me growing up in western New England and going on all these small roads. It didn't have anything to do with Maryland or anyplace."
The Shot
Two weeks ago, I found myself on the Honeymoon Trail Road in the back country near Tofte, Minnesota. Suddenly, I was flooded with memories of my childhood vacations in the north woods. The country road had taken me home.
When our photography group saw the road curving nicely to the right and out of sight, we stopped for a picture. The road sign seemed to be the perfect counterpoint to the brilliant distant tunnel in the leaves where the road disappeared.
As with most rural signs, it had a few bullet holes. Actually, twenty-four bullet holes and two shotgun hits.
After taking this image, I wandered up and down the road in search of a better composition. After about an hour, we realized that the first image was the best and we piled back into the car seeking other compositions.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus