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“People don’t have ideas; ideas have people.” — Carl Jung
There is a road, a small ordinary-looking two lane paved road that runs east west through green fields and farms, completely unremarked by dogs and squirrels and children. Its only unusual feature is that the grassy drainage ditch on its southerly verge is split in two by a modest straight mound. Not much of a wall really.
Some years back I found myself driving along this self-same way, which is known locally as Double Ditch Road with a friend. He lived in a small town in Washington State near the Canadian border, and we had come up to visit, pick some blueberries, and go camping. Exciting.
A mutual friend and family lived across the border on the outskirts of Vancouver and we all decided to drive over and spend the day. It took two cars, and on the way back he and I got a bit lost and separated from the others, overshot our route and had to retrace our steps. So we found ourselves tooling along west on Double Ditch Road.
As an American our droning drive along this two-lane country road became profoundly weird. Certainly it was a most ordinary little rural road except for two things: it was unusually straight, and on the left hand side as we drove west in the early evening was the eponymous ditch. In one spot I recall there were these were two grassy little ditches…