The Roads Less Taken Offer So Much More

The Roads Less Taken Offer So Much More

By Jim Wofford

I never wanted an office with a view. I wanted a view for my office, and I found that view from the back of a horse.

Virginia has 5,889 miles of unpaved roads, 300 in my home county, Loudoun. I’ve ridden over many of them, and they’re a time capsule—living museums, really— if you take the time to visit them.

They’re also a good excuse to leave your office, enjoy yourself, and view some of Virginia’s wildlife. For most of the past three-quarters of a century, I’ve ridden and trained horses all over northern Virginia, most of it on the Commonwealth’s priceless network of unpaved roads.

Horses walk about four miles an hour, which gives me time to look around. It’s amazing what I wonder when I let my mind wander. Who first stepped along this path? When did it become a wagon trail? Where does it go? And what happened next?

Some of the walls that enclose unpaved roads are more than a century old, and still standing. Have you ever really looked at a stone wall? Every rock was placed there by a human hand; walls are giant puzzles, solved by human ingenuity.

The materials were free. The rocks were a by-product of felling trees and clearing fields for planting and pasture. All it took to create the wall was backbreaking labor.

After the Civil War, workers, many of them recently freed slaves, were paid “a penny a running foot” (a subsistence wage at that time) to construct some of these walls.

The stones were typically buried two feet into the ground for a foundation, then usually built to a yard high. The better walls utilized little or no quartz, which crumbled under the relentless annual assault of freezing and thawing; sandstone and granite endure.

Cars are now the most common means of travel on these back roads. Though speed limits are set very low, few turn off onto one of these shaded lanes because they’re in a hurry. New to driving gravel roads? A suggestion: Put one front tire on the crown in the middle, and the other one off to the shoulder. This will prevent “bottoming out” on the raised middle.

Virginia’s unpaved roads are not just a path to a destination. They’re a window into the history of the area, and an opportunity to reunite with the natural world.

Although there are occasional straight stretches, resist the temptation to speed up. VDOT rarely bothers putting speed bumps along unpaved sections; it knows Mother Nature delights in growing them wild.

And let your mind meander. Did some of the 60 million bison that once populated the U.S. carve this path searching for fresh grass to graze. Did the Seneca and Shawnee tribes take this same byway? I’ve often thought the dust my horse kicked up once was stirred by the moccasins of Native Americans.

Others followed these paths: the first settlers with their carts drawn by oxen, and then riders with their eyes fixed on the summits and passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One such rider was a young man named George Washington, who used these tracks on his way to survey for Lord Fairfax the western territories of what was then a British colony. It’s strangely comforting that Washington first measured the metes and bounds of the country he would later help create.

I’m ambivalent about stone walls. There is something esthetically satisfying about a tidy wall, with all the cap rocks level and the grass verge neatly trimmed by weed-eaters. At the same time, weed-eaters are an invention of the devil, sent here to destroy the ecosystem. (I’m kidding…sort of.)

Mother Nature apparently doesn’t love stone walls. Left to her own devices, she’ll soon produce an astonishing profusion of life to disassemble them. Tall, thick hedges will cover a crumbling wall with creeping vines—bramble, honeysuckle, and multiflora rose.

At the right time of year, you can sample blackberries starting to ripen. But take advantage quickly; birds, deer, possums, and raccoons will soon harvest them, and the local fox surely will get his share tonight.

The hedges that frame your path may appear impenetrable, but peek underneath and you may find a parallel road system used by rabbits, ground hogs, chipmunks, mice, and other small ground game as protection from overhead predators.

There will be the occasional low spot in the hedge, where white-tail deer have jumped into the next field. A careful inspection will disclose a profusion of bird nests; this wall of bramble and honeysuckle is an avian condominium. Sparrows, wrens, mockingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, and gold finches will flutter out of the hedge ahead of you, twittering and chirping their protests at your intrusion, then settling back into the hedge behind you.

My favorite moments riding on an unpaved road unfold when a profusion of gold finches pours out of the hedge up ahead, forming a golden road—one that leads me to a deeper appreciation of these secret treasures of Virginia.

Jim Wofford is a three-time Olympian and one of the best-known eventing trainers in the world. The Upperville resident has been listed by the Chronicle of the Horse as one of the “50 Most Influential Horsemen of the 20th Century.”