"There's No Time On The River"

In one of my classes today, the professor asked us to play one of those getting-to-know you games that you wish teachers got out of their systems in junior high. While someone in the class was describing their hobbies, and I was busy doodling Spanish galleons in my notebook, something he said caught my attention. He said that his favorite thing in the world to do is drive, and he has made a road trip from Idaho down to Florida and then back through Michigan just for fun. Actually, he's done this twice.

It was then that I had two simultaneous and divergent reactions. On one hand I was like, “Dude! That's a lot of gas! That's bad for the environment AND for your finances.” On the other hand I was like, “Dude! That's wicked! I would love to do that, and I am having a hard time controlling my jealousy right now.”

See, I have this problem, a dilemma if you will.

I love driving. I love the control, the feeling of independence that is a part of our cultural identity. I love watching trees and rivers and landscapes change before me. I love setting that little slice of Americana to my own personal soundtrack and singing out to the hills. I love rolling down the windows, feeling the pressure of the wind on my face and its pull on my hair as I inhale the land's scent.

Bliss, Idaho smells like sage and sand, river water and crickets. Olympia, Washington smells like moss and marijuana, salt water and steel. St. Louis, Missouri smells like grass and sweat, mud and thunderstorms.

In high school, and even later on, when I got frustrated or completely broken down or couldn't sleep, I would jump in my car and drive. I would drive east until I found a sunrise, drive into the mountains until I could see all the stars, drive through the twisted foothill roads until my mind was straight.

When Nicole and I were working for the transportation department (best summer job ever, by the way) we spent most of our time driving on roads that only saw a few people a year. It was intoxicating. There was one day, one moment really, somewhere outside Rigby, Idaho that may have changed my life. We were mapping a road on the border of some kind of nature reserve or wetland conservation area.

It was just us, we were surrounded by tall grass and cattails stretching for miles. To our right was a break in the marsh and a long stretch of smooth, dark water reaching out to a wooded area of slender trees and underbrush.

The day was that kind of clear beauty that comes right after rain in the desert. The sky was an unbelievable blue, so pure and bright it seemed fake. The clouds were few and fluffy, cottony white. The wind was warm and barely strong enough to sway the grasses and ripple the surface of the lake, but enough to carry birdsong in through our windows. Our beat-up old jeep sailed down the road to the tune of “Aqueous Transmission.” Then way off to our right we saw a blue heron emerge from the shadowed water, sweep upward toward the impossibly blue sky, and then glide over the glittering lake. We were wrapped in sensation, to the point of bursting, almost to the point of crying, for no reason other than we might never experience anything this spontaneously wonderful in all our life. The moment was so perfect that we were afraid to move, to stop, to talk, as if it would break the spell, end it all. It felt sacred.

That sight, that day, encapsulated the joy I felt being at home in the west. It was one of the reasons I decided to come back here, to abandon my scholarship and the promise of a secure career, to revisit all the reasons I have become who I am. The summer I spent driving around southern Idaho completely altered the course of my life, I think for the better. So driving is a very symbolic act for me in some ways.

However, all emotion aside. I have to hate freeways. They brought about urban sprawl, the endangerment of small towns, and massive use of fossil fuels. I'm an environmentalist, a lazy one I'll grant you, but I still really care about it. I went to Sierra Club Summer Camp for crying out loud. Can I really justify driving for the sake of driving? Isn't it kind of perverse and opulent and arrogant to suppose that's a valid lifestyle choice?

Probably not. Thus my dilemma. I suppose it is a tribute to the complexity of humans that I can both love and hate the same thing. Why doesn't that make me feel better?

I did have fun reminiscing though. Perhaps tonight I will dream of blue herons in summer and black-eyed Susans. One can only hope.

***

"Lying face up on the floor of my vessel

I marvel at the stars
And feel my heart overflow"

-from "Aqueous Transmission" by Incubus