Reflections from The Road

Oof. September was a difficult and dizzying month.

I have so many THOUGHTS about LIFE: Some that are blog-worthy, many that are not.

Let me try to catch you up on the blog-worthy parts.

On September 16, a Sunday morning, Amy and I headed east. The first rains of Fall were splattering our windshield, smearing the dust and bugs, and then we crossed the mountains and, ka-bang! Sunshine.

Photo Credit: Amy Smucker

It took us over 8 hours to even get out of Oregon, and then we continued to drive on and on through the barren wilds of the West. Amy had downloaded an audio book version of Pride and Prejudice, so we listened in as Lizzie Bennet went to dances and house parties, met men of various sorts, and talked them over with her sisters.

Around 11 pm I decided to see if I could sleep. So Amy started driving and I managed to snooze a bit, but fitfully and badly. And then about 1:30 a.m., or probably 2:30 because surely we’d switched time zones by that point, Amy pulled into a rest area so that she could sleep too.

Rest areas, it turns out, are brilliantly lit. And now I didn’t even have the rumble of the engine to help me sleep. I tried, for a while, but finally I sat up and looked into Amy’s coffee cup. She had a good two inches of coffee left.

“I’ll drive if you’ll give me this coffee,” I said.

So we switched places and I drove, listening to music through one earbud. Driving through Wyoming in the middle of the night, you begin to feel as though the world goes on and on forever.

Well I mean, I guess it does, sort-of. Although there’s no road that reaches all the way around.

I was still a bit on the sleepy side, and though I was in no danger of falling asleep, I felt like my reaction times were slowing. The speed limit was 75 mph, but my car, laden down with my worldly belongings, had a lot of trouble making it up the mountains and hills at that speed. So I set my cruise at 60 mph and enjoyed a fantastic, relaxing drive. Hello thoughts, and ideas, and introvert time.

Amy woke up just as dawn was breaking in front of us, deeply purple and veined with thin clouds. Rejuvenated. Ready to drive again.

That was convenient timing.

We ate breakfast and now I slept. Oh, so soundly, with dreams and everything. Till noon-ish, though I forget which time zone. It was hot, here, and I changed clothes and brushed my teeth in a rest area bathroom.

I thought the hills would stop once we got to Kansas, but they didn’t. Isn’t Kansas supposed to be flat? Mr. Darcy proposed to Lizzy, and she rejected him. He wrote her a letter, and she read it in the woods, and started to notice her own biases. I love that turning point in the story.

There was no sign of Autumn in Kansas. It was hot, muggy, and oh so green. It looked like an Oregon spring and felt like a hot shower.

My 60 mph meanderings had cost us a good 3 to 4 hours. But finally we drove into Hutchinson, and pulled up in front of Heidi Mast’s apartment complex, at about 5 pm.

Stay tuned for Reflections from Kansas, coming soon to a blog near you. (And by that I mean this blog. And by soon I mean maybe tomorrow if I try really hard.)