I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Like most people I know, I tend to travel the same paths over and over.

The same walk to the coffee shop, or to my children's school, or to the post office.

The same familiar route around the block with my old dog, because she's comforted by familiar

sights and sense, and will stop, confused, if I try to lead her another way.

Even by car, many of us drive the same way to work or to school every day, influenced by traffic patterns and timing.

We have our preferred routes to run errands or to visit friends and family.

When you live in a place long enough, or visit a place enough times, you learn the most efficient

or most scenic ways to travel.

I often feel like I'm on autopilot, as if my car has driven itself to a familiar destination.

Maybe humans have muscle and sense memory not unlike my dog on her walk around the block.

We instinctively know the way,

and we are most comfortable traveling the paths we've traveled before.

It becomes a part of who we are, of how we know ourselves.

But sometimes we want or need to travel off the beaten path, as they say.

Sometimes, as we see in today's poem, we have to find or create a new way.

This is a poem by Carol Moldau.

What we wanted was a trail that would lead sufficiently far away to make it a good walk by the

time we got back.

We wanted its footprint to be light enough to escape notice,

but deep enough to follow.

Its root not known, its end sight and turning back point not yet glimpsed, but its mouth had to be where the easement

...