Road Trip
I don't like to drive. It's different though, when you're behind the wheel without a need to get from home to work, from home to an errand, from home to somewhere that your schedule dictates in a set amount of time.
3,650 miles in 16 nights through seven states. I'm on the road with Nan. We have a loose sense of going from here to there.
It's that loose sense that makes it more than driving. I am behind the wheel, and I don't mind it. As a matter of fact, I find myself liking it, watching the road, counting the states.
Even when there's monotony, I make up stories. The salt flats become my voyage across the desert, speeding across the landscape, noting emptiness, thinking that this must be what it's like when the apocalypse comes. A rest stop becomes
a shot in a film.
This must be what it's like when there is nobody.
I am not alone, though, and that makes the road trip more than my head, more than my eyes, more than my sense of where I'm going and where I've been. Nan snaps photos, Nan bags miles behind the wheel, Nan laughs when I decide that the salt flats hold a mirage of water.
Road trips hold surprises. A place becomes more than a name on a map, an exit. I spend an hour avoiding the local history museum, preferring to walk, counting the steps on my Fitbit, noticing windows and signs in small town Meeker, Colorado. People wave to me from their cars, smile when they walk past me. But there is no conversation. They don't know me. I pretend to be invisible. I always look, watch, notice what I don't expect to see. Hippies hang in the park in Craig, CO.
We get used to checking in, even though we carry camping gear and never use it, frightened by signs of bears, swatting of bugs, preferring the mystery bed over the hardened ground. It's an adventure
a literary wander
and simply beauty,
day after day
gazestruck
and still.
3,650 miles in 16 nights through seven states. I'm on the road with Nan. We have a loose sense of going from here to there.It's that loose sense that makes it more than driving. I am behind the wheel, and I don't mind it. As a matter of fact, I find myself liking it, watching the road, counting the states.
Even when there's monotony, I make up stories. The salt flats become my voyage across the desert, speeding across the landscape, noting emptiness, thinking that this must be what it's like when the apocalypse comes. A rest stop becomes a shot in a film.I am not alone, though, and that makes the road trip more than my head, more than my eyes, more than my sense of where I'm going and where I've been. Nan snaps photos, Nan bags miles behind the wheel, Nan laughs when I decide that the salt flats hold a mirage of water.
Road trips hold surprises. A place becomes more than a name on a map, an exit. I spend an hour avoiding the local history museum, preferring to walk, counting the steps on my Fitbit, noticing windows and signs in small town Meeker, Colorado. People wave to me from their cars, smile when they walk past me. But there is no conversation. They don't know me. I pretend to be invisible. I always look, watch, notice what I don't expect to see. Hippies hang in the park in Craig, CO.We get used to checking in, even though we carry camping gear and never use it, frightened by signs of bears, swatting of bugs, preferring the mystery bed over the hardened ground. It's an adventure
 |
| Crater Lake |
day after day
gazestruck
 |
| Bandon Beach |
and still.
You beautifully described your road trip as by reading all of your article about your road trip experinece i felt like i was also the part of thi sroad trip.
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