Letters From the Back Roads

 This newsletter was originally sent on March 20, 2026 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . March on the Back Roads: New Roads, New Books, and What Comes Next Dear Friends, March has been a month of movement, across back roads, through good books, and into a more structured season of this work. Out on the road, I spent time in Hot Springs, Arkansas, exploring places that carry more history than they first let on. The   Gangster Museum of America  offered a glimpse into a past shaped by vice and ambition, while  Josephine Tussaud’s Wax Museum   stood as a quieter, more curious reminder of how we choose to preserve memory. I also stopped at  St. Mary of the Springs ,  a place long associated with healing. I never made it inside, but I found something worth writing about just the same. As it turns out, the road rarely gives you exactly what you expect, but it almost a...

 This newsletter was originally sent on February 20, 2026 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . When Illness Is the Fast Dear friends, February has not been a triumphant month. It has been a month of soreness in pews, of naps that don’t quite fix the exhaustion, of blood pressure readings that make me sigh, and of asking harder questions about what it means to follow Christ when the body does not cooperate. I’ve been writing about illness lately,  not as a metaphor, but as reality. In  The Illusion of Comfort , I challenged the subtle belief that suffering must mean we have failed spiritually. That if we prayed harder, believed better, disciplined ourselves more, we would be healed. It is a very American temptation: the idea that health is proof of favor, and hardship is proof of error. But that is not the Gospel. Hot Springs, Arkansas, was once built around healing. Steam cabinet...

 This newsletter was originally sent on October 25, 2025 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . Winter Storm Fern &  The Art of Weathering Dear friends, As this note reaches you, Winter Storm Fern is moving through, bringing ice, snow, and the sort of power-outage mayhem that turns ordinary days into small logistical adventures. We’re as ready as one reasonably can be: a tent if things get dramatic, a camp stove, mobster mug-shot playing cards for morale, and more fajita fixings than strictly necessary. There’s mead. There are cinnamon rolls. There is Diet Pepsi. In short, we should be able to weather it just fine. Storms have a way of narrowing the world. When the weather closes in, life becomes very simple very quickly: warmth, light, food, rest. There’s something quietly instructive about that, especially when your body has been asking for the same kind of attention. This week’s blog ...

 This newsletter was originally sent on January 17, 2025 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . Welcome, Friends,  to News from the Back Roads! Dear friends, This week, I’m sharing just one piece of writing:  The Illusion of Comfort. It’s an essay that grew out of a realization I keep returning to, that much of our exhaustion comes from believing life is supposed to settle down into something easy, predictable, or pain-free. When it doesn’t, we assume we’ve failed or taken a wrong turn. Lately, I’ve been thinking less about comfort and more about movement. There are seasons when forward progress doesn’t look like growth or achievement. It looks like staying on the road at all. Keeping some small motion when stopping completely would be easier. Choosing continuity over certainty. This essay isn’t a solution, and it isn’t meant to be. It’s a naming of the terrain—of what it’s li...

 This newsletter was originally sent on January 10, 2026 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . Welcome, Friends,  to News from the Back Roads! Dear friends, The first full week of January always carries a strange weight. The calendar insists we move forward, but many of us are still standing in the doorway, looking back at what was, unsure yet of what comes next. This week’s essays live in that space. Between Motion and Stillness  was written from a season of learning how to stop pushing without giving up, to recognize that rest is not failure, and that stillness can be a form of movement when the road ahead isn’t yet clear. Alongside it is  The Ariyapariyesana Sutta , an ancient Buddhist text that returns to the very beginning of the search for meaning. Before doctrines, before certainty, before answers, there is the honest recognition that the old ways no longer suffic...

 This newsletter was originally sent on January 03, 2026 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . Welcome, Friends,  to News from the Back Roads! Hello friends, The year is still very new, and I’m noticing how quickly the world tries to rush us back into speed. Before momentum takes over, I wanted to pause here for a moment, long enough to choose the pace intentionally. Some seasons are for movement. Others are for maintenance. Knowing the difference matters more than we like to admit. Thank you for being here, and for reading with patience. Warmly, a.d. elliott Art and Other Odd Adventures Stories Found Along the Way 2026: The Year of Maintenance, A Medical Rest Stop 2026 is beginning as a  medical rest stop , not a breakdown, not a retreat, but a deliberate pause for maintenance and repair. A year of tending what needs care, moving gently, and refusing the pressure to rush wha...

 This newsletter was originally sent on December 27, 2025 Each month, I share new essays, books, and stories from the road. 📬 Want these updates in your inbox?  Subscribe here . Welcome, Friends,  to News from the Back Roads! Dear friends, This is one of those weeks that doesn’t hold still. The space between Christmas and the New Year is always strange — calendars pause, plans soften, and everything feels slightly unresolved. This year, that feeling is literal for me. Rather than rush to fill space, I’m sharing one piece that matters deeply: my latest essay on the Berglund Center — the land beneath it, the communities displaced to build it, and why place still matters when decisions are made quietly.  Some weeks are for abundance. This one is for attention. a.d. elliott Art and Other Odd Adventures Stories Found Along the Way Sacred Ground and Civic Memory: The Berglund Center Site Explained This week’s essay examines the Berglund Center not as a single bu...