Very few people genuinely believe the Gray Road Theory is plausible. The fact of the matter is that hoping really, really hard that something is true looks a lot like belief, and there is no shortage of hope among those who aspire to travel but do not have the means. This is what fills out the perceived population, an abundance of Gray Road Theory ‘hopers’ on the internet and, occasionally, traveling the wayside. Rumors of legitimate Gray Routes give them hope and the wayside takes that hope and consumes it. The less hope they have, the more evangelical they become. Until they have no hope at all.
(In which case they go home.)
The span of life between falling for Gray Road Theory and returning home is characterized by aimless wandering and occasional conventions. The conventions traditionally take place in one of the bizarre locales theorized to be connected to a Gray Route and are, therefore, very out of the way. They reek of disappointment by the second day as the attendees that remain, like old women at an assisted care facility, trade stories of dizzy spells and lost time.
The headline acts of these events are never the same year to year. The reputability of any one Gray Road Theorist is as laughable as the theory itself and dependent entirely on the whims of the year’s attendees. Sometimes the community demands that an aspect of Gray Road Theory is proven definitively, other times they want to see the old assumptions cast aside. They construct a shallow mockery of the jumps and starts of the existing scientific community, seemingly content with plateaus but giddy with the knowledge that soon there will be a staged discovery, a Gray Road Revolution that will turn everything they once thought upside down (and it’s been turned so often, reader, that even the most dedicated followers aren’t sure which way is up anymore).
The reason Gray Road Theory never goes anywhere, you see, is because they’re always having to start over. There is always a crack in the foundation and so the house never gets built. Would it be a nice house? Sure, but the foundation cracks because the ground is wrong. This world just won’t support the sort of thing they’re trying to build.
Many won’t deny any of this. They agree that the way we understand our laws won’t support their theory. They nod and smile and go on hoping, hoping to the brink of belief, but never quite reaching it.
If only there was some way to shorten the distance.
-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
