The Road That Disappears Into Water
What a vanished road in Maine reveals about the choices we live with
Somewhere in Maine, a road ends in silence.
If you camp along Flagstaff Lake, you might find it. A painted centerline stretches forward, then vanishes beneath the surface. The pavement continues, but your feet can’t follow. It disappears into stillness. Into something older than the lake itself.
In 1950, this valley was flooded. Two villages—Flagstaff and Dead River—were cleared to make way for a dam. Houses were moved or torn down. Others were left in place. The reservoir rose and kept rising. When it stopped, it had covered homes, roads, schools, fields. A map was rewritten. A story erased.
The power came on. The people were gone.
My longtime friend, who has lived in Maine her entire life, recently told me this story, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Not for its engineering. Not for its efficiency. But for the image of that road disappearing underwater. For the memory of those who once lived at the end of it. I think about their dinner tables. Their shoes by the door. Their laughter and their worry. What it must have felt like to pack a house into a truck. Or leave it behind.
I also think about the things we carry that we didn’t choose. How many of us are walking over submerged roads in our own lives. How often we live inside consequences we never agreed to, shaped by choices made long before we understood what they meant.
Parts of ourselves that were once whole neighborhoods. Decisions made long ago that still ripple under our days. Ghosts we perform for without realizing we’ve turned our lives into a pageant of unfinished business.
And yet, we see the line.
We see where it disappears. We feel where it pulls.
That’s what power is, too. Not just control. Not just ambition. Power is memory. Power is the courage to ask what was here before. Power is knowing that a road doesn’t stop just because it slips from view. It keeps going.
So do we.