Amber waves of abstracted America.
7/14/15 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alasanonThere are a lot of things to say about road trips, and many people have said them with far more grace than I ever will. If they're long enough or cover enough ground, you can describe the terrain, which in this country is everchanging and lovely, or boring if you're feeling fussy and cramped.
--
The sky in Montana is huge and goes on forever, this is known, and well-documented. The River (as if there is only one, the Mighty Mississippi [em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye -- sung out by children in elementary schools even on this side of the country]) is swollen, eyeing the levies and pretending it has no banks to speak of. The Missouri is more polite, carrying the extra weight with a little more aplomb and a little less threat. The mountains are purple with dusk and the grain does wave in their shadows, casting minuscule prayers towards the sun, who is a kinder and more caring god.
We were caught in a thunderstorm crossing the Rockies. The mist surrounds you, clouds that you might think of as low-hanging until you realize just how far up you are, and the lightning flashes are spare and unkind. Being in a sealed, low-flying space capsule, the thunder was dim and seemed to come from much further away. The semis rumbling past were louder and deeper and far more frightening. I couldn't concentrate on my book (I could write essays on the strangeness of e-books) and had to stop and watch the rain streak the windows, cleaning the dust and bugs from the glass.
--
Driving at night is strange for someone who has read as many apocryphal tales as I have. I kept expecting to peep out of my window to see an uncanny black form galloping beside the car, or otherworldly eyes glowing in the distance, but neither of these things ever came true. Instead I saw simpler things, more explicable and sadder. The crumpled heaps of fur or feathers marking animals that have been hit by cars or trucks, sometimes grimly recognizable but more often not. Raccoons, marked by their ringed tails; rabbits, opossums, and infinite numbers of small black birds; deer, the most recognizable, the least frequent, and the largest. Two cars, freshly crashed and miles apart, one white and one black, both with airbags deployed. The drivers were not visible, and I hope that they are all right. Heaps of safety glass marking other crashes. Destroyed guardrails. White crosses or signs marked with doves saying that, yes, a human died on this remote spot, not long enough ago to have been forgotten completely, too long ago to have names or memorial wreaths.
--
We stopped in so many places to charge the car. Not frequently enough to be a bother but rather a pleasant, if enforced, break from the monotony of constant movement. Often near motels or hotels, usually tucked away a safe distance from the entrances. Sometimes near restaurants or, in a couple of towns, gas stations. We had two overlong nights of driving, and my partner napped at each one while I stayed awake watching the slow upward tick of the green bar marking how many miles we could safely drive before the next stop. We never ran too low -- the network is almost complete across the country, mostly slatted wooden boxes and red-lit white alien frames, all carefully marked high voltage, but crossing Missouri was mildly harrowing. It's only two hundred and ten miles across near the top, though, did you know? I didn't, until the need to calculate carefully each leg of the journey dictated that I should learn.
--
We drove through deserts and salt flats, mountains, river valleys, endless fields of corn, pastures for placidly chewing cows and their livelier spring babies. We visited cities, small dusty towns where everything looks like it was built after some mythical Old West model, shopping malls that ranged from lively and modern to dying from the sluggish attrition of no one wanting to live in the towns they were built to serve. We checked off every description in America the Beautiful and Home on the Range.
--
Once again, I am home, secure in my quiet, cool apartment with my cats and my lightly agonized Northwest sensibilities.
All I want is to do is sleep, but there are so many things that need doing. I'll start them tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
--
The sky in Montana is huge and goes on forever, this is known, and well-documented. The River (as if there is only one, the Mighty Mississippi [em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye -- sung out by children in elementary schools even on this side of the country]) is swollen, eyeing the levies and pretending it has no banks to speak of. The Missouri is more polite, carrying the extra weight with a little more aplomb and a little less threat. The mountains are purple with dusk and the grain does wave in their shadows, casting minuscule prayers towards the sun, who is a kinder and more caring god.
We were caught in a thunderstorm crossing the Rockies. The mist surrounds you, clouds that you might think of as low-hanging until you realize just how far up you are, and the lightning flashes are spare and unkind. Being in a sealed, low-flying space capsule, the thunder was dim and seemed to come from much further away. The semis rumbling past were louder and deeper and far more frightening. I couldn't concentrate on my book (I could write essays on the strangeness of e-books) and had to stop and watch the rain streak the windows, cleaning the dust and bugs from the glass.
--
Driving at night is strange for someone who has read as many apocryphal tales as I have. I kept expecting to peep out of my window to see an uncanny black form galloping beside the car, or otherworldly eyes glowing in the distance, but neither of these things ever came true. Instead I saw simpler things, more explicable and sadder. The crumpled heaps of fur or feathers marking animals that have been hit by cars or trucks, sometimes grimly recognizable but more often not. Raccoons, marked by their ringed tails; rabbits, opossums, and infinite numbers of small black birds; deer, the most recognizable, the least frequent, and the largest. Two cars, freshly crashed and miles apart, one white and one black, both with airbags deployed. The drivers were not visible, and I hope that they are all right. Heaps of safety glass marking other crashes. Destroyed guardrails. White crosses or signs marked with doves saying that, yes, a human died on this remote spot, not long enough ago to have been forgotten completely, too long ago to have names or memorial wreaths.
--
We stopped in so many places to charge the car. Not frequently enough to be a bother but rather a pleasant, if enforced, break from the monotony of constant movement. Often near motels or hotels, usually tucked away a safe distance from the entrances. Sometimes near restaurants or, in a couple of towns, gas stations. We had two overlong nights of driving, and my partner napped at each one while I stayed awake watching the slow upward tick of the green bar marking how many miles we could safely drive before the next stop. We never ran too low -- the network is almost complete across the country, mostly slatted wooden boxes and red-lit white alien frames, all carefully marked high voltage, but crossing Missouri was mildly harrowing. It's only two hundred and ten miles across near the top, though, did you know? I didn't, until the need to calculate carefully each leg of the journey dictated that I should learn.
--
We drove through deserts and salt flats, mountains, river valleys, endless fields of corn, pastures for placidly chewing cows and their livelier spring babies. We visited cities, small dusty towns where everything looks like it was built after some mythical Old West model, shopping malls that ranged from lively and modern to dying from the sluggish attrition of no one wanting to live in the towns they were built to serve. We checked off every description in America the Beautiful and Home on the Range.
--
Once again, I am home, secure in my quiet, cool apartment with my cats and my lightly agonized Northwest sensibilities.
All I want is to do is sleep, but there are so many things that need doing. I'll start them tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
