Road Song

Americans' love of the road is legendary and all that, and of course Jack Kerouac's iconic book is said to be a symbol of that love affair. I never thought about it much, growing up near a city where public transportation was incredibly easy, and it wasn't until I moved to the Midwest that I started figuring it out.

Driving is freedom, and freedom is about getting where you want to go whenever you want to go there. Other countries have their trains, and America is starting to here and there, but I have a feeling that no matter what happens in the world, Americans will always love their cars and the open road.

I myself am not in love with driving and never will be -- though I am married to someone who adores it. This morning while (miserably) driving to work I thought about a friend with marital troubles. About two years ago, he got in his car one morning (after leaving a note, I presume)? He drove from the Midwest to the coast where members of his family lived, saying he needed time to think.

I believe his mind was made up the minute he got in the car, but he didn't know it yet. He needed every stoplight, highway entrance, gas station, motel and pot of coffee before he hit Chicago to realize he wasn't coming home again--at least, not to stay. He needed every smile from diner waitresses and he needed the smell of rain on asphalt to tell him he was alive. He need the sound of children whooping as they play with their dog at a rest stop and maybe a couple arguing in the motel room next to his.

The road comforts us and shows us the way; it also terrifies us sometimes with the ugliness of certain drivers. At those times, other roads lead us to safety and we can always find a way to a new path that takes us somewhere else. It gives us time to think of what we want to say and how we want to say it.

My friend needed to leave his life, and start a new one, or take up strands of his old life and rebuild them into something stronger again. When we spoke after his journey, he said, "This will not be a rational conversation," but I didn't need rational conversation to know he was gone, just as you don't need to talk to a hawk when it leaves the ground.

America offers us the road the way other countries offer up castles or cathedrals--as a monument to the Possible, and we all need the Possible more than life, because without it, what is life worth? I think of my friend's journey from time to time as a journey back to his Self.

The road was there to help him regain that self before he lost it forever. This morning, I realized all of this while driving to work and thinking about my own journey--what I lost, what I found, what I wanted and still want.

I have a new home now, and my husband and I get up every day and look at water, which gives us the illusion that at any time, at any moment, we can jump in a canoe or swim our way to Canada and beyond. I hope we do some day, but I have a feeling if we go, we're going to need a car for at least some part of our trip. Because if you're American, the road is always calling you.

There's always the promise of where you might go.

Road photo: Syuzo Tsushima
Lakeside Tree photo: Syuzo Tsushima

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