Cambridge
Cambridge isn’t a destination, at least not in the sense of packing your bags and aiming for it like a bull’s eye on a dart board. Nestled in one of Idaho’s many valleys, among rolling hills that rise and fall like the breath of the land itself, it’s the kind of town you drift through rather arrive at. The county highway threads right through it, signs counting down from 55 to 45 to 35, until you find yourself coasting at 25 along the main drag, taking it all in, lungs filling with the dry, sweet taste of nowhere, caught in the gentle insistence of the road itself.
Rural places like these, where there isn’t enough traffic to justify a bypass, pose a subtle question: is getting to where you're going inherently better than plain old getting? I mean its as if the road itself seems to lean into your passenger-side window, shaking a finger at you: “Slow down, asshole. Take a look, use them eye balls to see that little punk ass kid of a bike wobble by like he’s just defied gravity or a storekeeper sweeping the sidewalk cause they ain’t got nuthin’ better to do.
I mean, sure, if you gotta take a shit or your dog is choking on a chicken bone, i can understand the getting there vs the shitting your pants. but just how often are we so shit stricken that a toilet is more a case of survival than a daily chore?
In Cambridge, the highway becomes a philosophical instrument: kicking dust into your eyes until you remember that being present isn’t just a quaint notion, it’s a goddamn survival skill. I mean think about how much your life would change if only you could shut off that relentless electric organ buzzing in your skull, the one keeping you tethered to notifications and the endless parade of bullshit. How happy is a dog for its bone or a stick, gnawing on it like it’s the entire universe.
And maybe that’s what these towns, these slow stretches of asphalt threading through nowhere, really are: material places to throttle your nonmaterial mind. The physical pains from a long drive: an achy back, a bulging bladder, cranky hips, they force you to inhabit your body, your senses, your immediate surroundings. The sun burning your forearm, smell the tang of diesel, dust and manure, the ding-ding of a weathered brass bell that hangs above a storefront door that chimes every time someone passes through. You can gnaw on it like a bone, chase it like a stick, fight it, indulge it, wish it otherwise and that’s the human glory of it.
Thou mayest whatever you choose.
Established in the early 1900s as a ranching and agricultural hub, it has proudly held onto its roots and keeping that small town way of life and nowhere is that charm more evident than at Loveland's General Store, a true poster child for small-town America.
Walking through its doors instantly put me back home growing up as a kid, a virtual reality time capsule, a blast from the past boasting a full Hotwheels section, those paddles with a ball attached from a string that i never figured out how to bounce for more than maybe 5 times, old skool watermelon Laffy Taffy flavor, that had those little black candy seeds scattered throughout the green rectangular strip of taffy, cans of pork and beans the size of Nicole’s noggin and one hell of a Cambell’s soup section, where all the cans lay horizontal and when you grab the bottom one, all the cans above it violently fall, filling the newly opened space.
