The Known Land: Cul-de-Sacs of Wisconsin

In each gate is a road, empty and desolate.

(There's not a single thing. It belies your everyday life. If you look, you'll go blind.)

Not desolate-

(After all. Luckily, there's a place to turn around. Already blind-so I strike!)

-from "Magu Carrying His Ringed Staff", The Blue Cliff Record

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I make frequent trips through Northern Wisconsin and find ourselves passing numerous cul-de-sacs, small circles where rural roads dead-end. In my lifetime these roads went through but when they widened Highway 29, rather than build over or underpasses, they severed the routes, making them less-than-direct, which must be frustrating for the locals. 

I decided to document these small marvels of refusal, the intention compiling a book with locations, maps, and borrowed satellite images.