Introduction

Lately, I’ve been getting into arguments with my GPS, who insists, among other things, that it is necessary to drive through, rather than around, Sacramento when we return to Boise from the coast. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure I detect a little irritation in her voice as she says “recalculating” whenever I ignore her directions. Overall, though, I’m grateful for her help with navigation. I am not good at this, often taking a left turn when I should take a right, driving eastbound when it should be west, often following the longer distance between where I am and where I’m going. Writing, of course, is something else entirely. To navigate the world with words is to recalculate all the time.

One of the commonest conversations I have with writing students begins something like this: “I had this idea in my head of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, and I simply couldn’t get it down right.” This is the main reason writers abandon drafts. They imagine that writing should be a straight shot from where they are to where they’re going, avoiding the inefficiency of detours, much less accidents. But I’m always hoping for accidents. Why else do the hard work of writing if not for the chance that you’ll find out what you didn’t know you knew? If there was a literary GPS, it would lead us right off the cliff every time.

I don’t know it for sure, but I suspect that most of the wonderful stories in this collection began as cars that their authors drove off the road but refused to abandon. Writing often demands this kind of stubborn faith in necessary detours, but so does reading; we learn to expect the unexpected. The Cabin invites you slide

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into the passenger seat and trust your drivers, some of southern Idaho’s finest writers, as they navigate this year’s theme: Detour.

— BRUCE BALLENGER

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DETOUR writers in the attic

BYPASS

Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.

AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS