Slowly, I’m becoming well-acquainted with long drives.
For several months now I’ve made the trek up I-71, the northeasterly vein that pumps traffic from my hometown of Wilmington to my home-away-from-hometown in Columbus, some 60 cornfield miles away. Almost three times a week I set out, most often in the late afternoon but sometimes before the sun is up, and push my car along. My sluggish but reliable Prizm shrieks and moans during the first few minutes of every trip, but then, like clockwork, it settles into the well-worn hum of 80,000+ miles and counting. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy these trips.
Setting aside my ghastly carbon footprint for a moment, a lot of good comes of this time spent driving. It’s one of the few times during my week when I’m forced to think, uninterrupted. Most of my best ideas (though they are few) seem to come when I’m playing steering-wheel drums to Yo La Tengo, or crooning along with Ray LaMontagne. Strange as it sounds, I feel more connected with the farmers and cattlemen as I pass their homes and roadside livelihoods along my route. I’m sure I’m alone in this regard: most of my fellow travelers are barreling headlong to some distant Point B, while I’m cruising and content at 65 in the slow lane.
A recent trip from Wilmington to Columbus brought back memories of another long drive from my past: a trip across the plains, from Ohio to Colorado and back with Miss Frankie. We had already been driving for twelve hours on the first day of the trip when the strip-malls of Kansas City disappeared, and the rolling expanse of eastern Kansas spread out around the highway. We were speechless, awed by nothing (or, so much of nothing). Before driving through it, my mental image of the Great Plains was shaped exclusively by Steinbeck and the Wizard of Oz– both of them right. But it wasn’t long before the serene landscape and gently blowing tumbleweeds were overtaken by a maroon blanket of clouds and the whipping winds of a summer thunderstorm in Kansas. Nickel-sized hale and winds that would capsize a semi forced us onto the first exit we came across. After sizing up our day’s travels, we decided to stop for the night in Salina, KS, the geographic middle of the United States and the only town with a hotel for the next forty miles.
The next morning my Mom called from Ohio, waking us up with news that Salina, Kansas, our host for the night, was on every morning talk show because of tornado-like weather that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. We scooted, skipped the complimentary breakfast and decided we had seen enough of Kansas. When we got on the highway, though, an eerie, post-apocalyptic feeling set in: we were not just the only car on the highway, but lining the ditches for miles were abandoned semis that had been blown over by the winds the day before, literally felled by Mother Nature herself.
I’ll never forget that drive, and when I saw an overturned semi at mile marker 68 along I-71, it brought it all back.
What is it about a terminally flat, boring-at-first-glance drive that strikes a chord? Hell if I know. Something, though, is humbling, humanizing and beautiful about it, and I’m glad to have seen it.
