With the example set by Cincinnatus (520-430 BC), the abandonment of power and corruption in the city for the virtue of the farm became idealized. From George Washington’s Mount Vernon to Jefferson’s Monticello, Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm, Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo, and George W’s Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, the ideal of leaving behind power and corruption for life on the farm has been refined to high art. Motorcyling over country roads will occasionally bring into view contemporary displays of this Ancient Virtue.
Today the drama of urbanization enables more people to live close to nature and at a level of refinement unprecedented in human history. Bohouslav Road in Fayette County may be unpaved but the art of refined living seems not to suffer at all. Tractors from the early part of the last century sit freeze-framed in the field but they still run and they still shred. The first mile of Bohouslav Road is a visible feast and it’s only the beginning of a remarkable tour through the ancien regime. The most fun you can have at 20 mph.
Steel Wheels 