Pee on the right tree, and your life changes.

Detours aren’t planned. Not by us travelers, anyway.

A true detour is a wild card. It takes you somewhere you never planned on going.

So, in the spirit of true “detouring,” I set out on this issue’s road trip with an open mind. No specific destination this time – just a full tank of gas, two cherry limeades, a Red Bull, bottled water and my worn-out travel atlas.

At noon Thursday – exactly when I was supposed to be in English class reading Steinbeck – I was driving to Iowa instead.

“Life is short. Take detours.”

The first thing you notice about Iowa is the absence of restrooms for hundreds of miles at a time. You’ll pass towns with names like “Waterville,” “Tanktown” and “Pedee,” but you won’t see a bathroom in any of them.

The second thing you’ll notice is a lone tree next to the highway whispering “pee on me” because you brought way too much to drink. Forty (or so) road trippers have peed on that tree.

Most of them will tell you there’s something inspiring about that frantic leak. As you’re shifting back and forth in mid-urination to stay hidden from traffic, you stop and enjoy that long overdue relief – nirvana for travelers. At that exact moment, if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear another whisper float down from the branches above you.

That was mine. Yours could be West. Or North. It could be any combination of those you can think of and even some you can’t. It could be something else entirely. Really, depending on how the Tree feels, it could be anything. 

Whatever it says, though, you climb back into your car or truck or bike with a renewed sense of direction. It’s not that you suddenly know right where you’re headed – it’s that you’re finally 100 percent OK with not having a clue. You just zip up, zip off and, in the words of the Tree, head “East.”

It’s not cheating to use a map. You can follow it anywhere that sounds interesting (I seek out towns near water) and improvise from there. You don’t want to spend the whole trip with your nose in an atlas, calculating the quickest route or finding the best-paved road, because if you do that, it’s not a detour anymore.

But you can get a glimpse of the area where you’re headed, figure out one way to get there and watch yourself stray from the beaten path.

Me?

I end up staring at the Statue of Liberty.

OK, it’s a scaled replica the local Boy Scouts donated to the city of Burlington, Iowa. Sitting on the banks of the Mississippi River, the statue itself is probably no longer than one of the real statue’s nose hairs.

But for me, it’s a sign I’ve made it “East.”

Here, Times Square is the Catfish Bend Riverboat Casino, a floating smorgasbord of flashing lights and beeping machines. The big public area is called Crapo Park, but I’ll bet it’s safer and no crappier than Central Park. And in a place like Burlington, the sprawling Great River Bridge is every bit as admirable as that one in New York. You can even find a spot to lean out over the Mississippi and fool yourself into thinking it’s Manhattan’s East River.

Maybe I’m exaggerating.

Truthfully, it’s not like the big city, not one bit.Burlington’s just a worm compared to the Big Apple. But that doesn’t mean I’m any less content.

You can’t walk into the visitors’ center in a huge city and receive royal treatment. You can’t get a private movie screening in New York – not unless you’re in the movie. You can’t drive around aimlessly without getting honked and cussed at. You can’t stroll up and down the sidewalks downtown without bumping into, you know, tourists.

Tourists are so much less appealing than detourists.

No, my trip wasn’t long. Or glamorous. But you know what? It was spontaneous and cheap. You take those two ingredients, and you can make any trip worthwhile.

You just have to get out on the road sometime, hit the gas and look for your tree. You’ll know it when you see it. Your bladder will scream out for you to stop, please stop, seriously STOP ALREADY, and you’ll hit the ground waddling.

People talk about near-death experiences.

Mine was a near-wet experience, but I survived it and came away with a valuable lesson: To find direction, sometimes you just have to trust your gut feeling and let your spirit run free.