roads

8.8.2016

I find myself in the strangest place today. As I revel in this newfound happiness, I am also far more aware and observant of my surroundings--I'm seeing the world in technicolor! (I wonder which is the cause and which the effect?) When I watched a movie, I was acutely aware of the soundtrack and the feelings the music evoked. When I went to the store, I got caught up in the smells of the produce, the relationship dynamics around me, everything but my grocery list. When I went for a drive on the back roads, I didn't want to return...I just wanted to keep going, keep seeing what's out there that I'd never noticed before.

This post should end here...short and sweet...but it doesn't. As I drove down dirt roads, I suddenly remembered being a teenager, in a car full of friends, packed in, sitting on laps, driving down dirt roads. I remember the thrill of making out with the boy I liked in the back seat of the car, while another friend drove crazy fast, kicking up dirt and gravel and losing traction on the road, creating fear and exhilaration as we sped away from our small-town lives for an hour or two after school. What else do you do when you grow up in a town of 2000 people and go to a high school with not much over 300 kids?

I think that's almost my earliest memory of a love for back roads as an escape from my life (though I do recall loving early evening motorcycle rides on back roads with my dad as a kid, sitting behind him and holding onto him, feeling the wind in my face, relishing the last hour of daylight as the sun went down in the sky and made the fields glow). It's been a very, very long time since I raced down back roads, and today they bring less thrill and more peace. They represent both escape from and journey to, depending on the day. In my "real life," I seem to choose the hard roads...but when I travel the back roads, nothing seems hard, and no direction seems wrong.