Read time: 4 min.

My parents found themselves unexpectedly busy not too long ago and I was drafted into dog duty. It was time to take Eliza on a walk, so off we went down the long drive behind their neighborhood. I hadn’t been back there in years! Somewhere between the first few steps and the bridge at the end, the past came rushing back. 

My parents’ neighborhood traces its roots to 1972. Their house, my childhood home, followed five years later. Much earlier, the entire addition and others nearby were part of the 255-acre farm of Robert McKinley. 

The McKinleys were prominent in my neck of the woods: even today, the ruins of the old McKinley Schoolhouse still sit nearby, as does the pioneer-era McKinley Cemetery if you know where to find it. The third-of-a-mile drive behind my parents’ once led to the McKinley farmhouse! Today, it provides access to a couple of sprawling dwellings and a horse farm.

I didn’t know any of that when we moved to the area, but it didn’t take long for that drive to become my playground. It wasn’t suitable for scooters since it was gravel back then, but the driveway provided many other opportunities for adventures.

For starters, it was a shortcut to my friend Drew’s house and backyard basketball court. The court and hoop were forlorn the day I passed, but seeing it again took me right back to those long summer days and the sound of a swishing net.

The driveway curves and undulates. About four hundred feet past Drew’s old place, it crosses York Prairie Creek. When I was a kid, the bridge was little more than a narrow metal slab with an inch-tall lip on either side- just enough to make every crossing feel like a calculated risk. Still, that didn’t stop us from exploring.

My brother and I used to scramble down the rip-rap embankment, stack rocks to dam the creek, flip them over for crawdads, and wade through the slow, lazy water. Once, we even stumbled onto a hidden pond nearby! I felt like an expert explorer right up until its owners ran us off. We certainly weren’t the reason those “Children At Play” signs we scrambled past on the way back were installed, but we were glad to inherit them.

Back in the present, Eliza and I reached the bridge. Just past once stood the old McKinley home. We paused for a moment, then turned back the way we came. Heading back, it struck me how much that stretch of gravel had once meant. Nearly thirty years ago, it wasn’t just a driveway- it was an escape hatch. 

Every trip down it nudged the edges of my world a little farther out beyond the familiarity of my backyard and into something wide open with possibility. Each time I came back, I carried a rare mix of contentment and anticipation for whatever I might find next. I didn’t have a happy childhood during the process of blending a new family, and those moments exploring the driveway mattered because they weren’t easy to come by. 

I reflected on that for a minute as I saw a cardinal bathing in a pothole. It felt like the kind of ordinary moment I might’ve missed back then, but maybe that’s the point. Even as a kid, the old McKinley drive taught me how to look, how to wander, how to find something meaningful in places most people would pass without a second thought. 

Exploring the long driveway didn’t fix everything, and it didn’t need to. Scouting out back there just gave me pockets of something better; reminders that there was more out there than whatever I’d left behind at home.

Standing there recently, with Eliza gently tugging at the leash, I realized that not much has really changed. The creek still runs, the drive still curves, and the sense that something worth finding might be just a little farther ahead is still there if you’re willing to go looking for it.