Sidewalks
| What makes some people hit the road and others stand their ground? |
| Summer -– the time we think about traveling down a dusty, maybe not so deserted, road. Now that the skies have opened wider, it’s time. It’s been awhile. There have been cancelled trips, or ones never planned lest they be canceled, family reunions, weddings, lazy beach vacations, or passport banned. Forgotten habits. Forgotten feelings. The forgotten excitement of the unknown and unseen. Feeling discombobulated. It’s not natural for us to be sedentary. Travel is in our DNA. We humans have always lived as nomads – hunter-gatherers, seekers, moving about in small bands. |
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So what’s the purpose in the going? Maybe jest to get where you ain’t. Maybe to get to a place more interesting than the one left behind. Maybe, just maybe, to discover, uncover or recover what lies ahead. Or just to take a break from activities that are avoiding our ever diminishing attention span. |
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| I especially savour solo road trips. Sometimes I drive ten hours straight, ending the day looking like a particularly ill-used hostage – and exhausted. For example, once after a particularly long stint, I stopped at a red light in a beautiful town in Oregon. As I admired the storefronts and scenery, I didn’t notice that the light had turned green and back to red again. It was then that a sherrif tapped on my window and said, “That’s all the colors we got here.” |
| Pleasure-seeking wastrel |
| I think there are few things more despondent than being alone in a motel; looking like the kind of location a body might be found in an advanced state of decomposition. Aftrer a long day on the road, you slump onto the sagging mattress, soft as pizza-dough. The view – a desolate, puck-marked and crumbling grey parking lot. A smouldering dusk is overtaking the sky. A long, long night is in store, mostly bent on reviewing the central quandaries of your life; sorting out love, crises, relationships, and purpose. Nothing, if not inspiring sadness. |
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| But it doesn’t really matter, as I never particularly had a desire to keep up, or even, frankly, to sit up. |
| So before the final mustard coloured days of fall before it resembles a grumbling old man, I get in the car – and drive. |
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