Thanks For the Detour, and All the Fish

"It is not down in any map; true places never are."
-Herman Melville

Spouse and I grumbled about the sudden diversion on our way home. The roadworks and warning signs had been pitifully difficult to see, and abruptly we found ourselves propelled off the main road and rambling along an uneven stretch of countryside. The meandering route of twenty miles promised to set us back at least thirty minutes- rather precious time considering that we were travelling with an amount of kindly donated frozen fish and had set out from our friends' house much later than we intended.
A convoy of fellow drivers, also forced to diverge, soon gathered behind and in front of us as we trailed at a slower pace than we would have wished.
It was drawing near to evening time as we found ourselves silently observing the dream-like greenery of the landscape. A ghostly mist was slowly wrapping itself around the shadows of broken tractors, rusty gates and dense, dark woods.
We coasted past crooked barns whose cobwebbed, vacant windows offered a fleeting glimpse of the past and of half-forgotten history. We caught the brief flash of a river that intersected time itself.
The unfamiliar fragment of the world that we stumbled upon was exquisitely ripe and overgrown green, and exuded so powerful a sense of history as to seem almost drunk with it; I doubt the scene had changed at all in the last century.
Spouse and I have seen many a beautiful place in our travels but such a detour at the close of a perfect Summer day was so spectacular and unexpected that it took our breath away there and then.
As a rule when driving we do choose the scenic route even though it tends to extend the journey, and in our hearts we are always aware that the wider roads tend to offer little in the way of beauty. On this occasion, though, we had been inclined to complain a little about the delay both because of our concern for the fish and because we had not anticipated the extent of the magic.
We both felt enveloped by the persisting goodness and warmth of a nook that we could lamentably only experience from a moving car.
Spouse said, as roadsigns advised the end of the detour and we began our descent into what is commonly termed civilisation, that he was really quite glad we were forced to go astray.
I think that we would like to go back for a visit, or to live there permanently.
One can ask nothing more of a detour.