A drive home across the mountains. No music, no news. Just the road and the ground fog, great swirling gobs of it. For more than an hour it rose from the earth, a sigh of gratitude, a bit of yogic breathing. It seemed as if nighttime was shedding its long robe, tossing it off in the first light of morning.
Yesterday, on my way to Kentucky, I drove along the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System as the late senator was lying in state at the capitol in Charleston. As I listened to eulogies on the radio, I zoomed along Route 33, Route 55, gorgeous curving two-lane roads and even the occasional stretch of four-lane pavement, roads to nowhere it might seem to outsiders, but not to West Virginians, of course. To them, the roads were proof their senator cared about them, that their state mattered. To generations of West Virginians, these roads are the way out of cloistered communities, a way out into the world beyond. But yesterday, they were a way back in.
Articles on stress reduction often present this scenario: You’re driving to work and someone is tailgating you. Instead of getting angry, imagine that the fast driver is late for an important job interview or his wife is about to have a baby.
For me, the opposite is true. I am the impatient driver; for me the story has to explain why the car ahead of me is going so slowly. Maybe it’s a newly licensed driver on her own for the first time, I tell myself. Or an old man, clinging to his license because it gives him the freedom to live on his own.
This morning, I had a chance to study the slow driver when I pulled up next to him at a light. He was a middle aged guy wearing a loud print shirt. Next to him was a prim older lady. As soon as I saw them, I had my explanation. He was taking her to Fairfax Hospital for outpatient surgery. She was nervous, so he was driving way below the speed limit. Suddenly my impatience was beside the point. I was embarking on a normal day; for them, this day might change their lives forever. Of course, for all I know they may have been dashing out for a gallon of milk. But it doesn’t matter. I drove more slowly after that.
At no time does the quotation “life is a journey, not a destination,” seem more apt than when you take a four-day trip, two days of which are spent driving there and back. I’ve always appreciated the meaning of this line, that the striving matters as much as the goal we’re striving for. But it’s always been hard for me to practice. Some of us are cursed; we are goal-driven by nature.
But on this trip, I did enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Part of it was the mountain scenery, the high snows on the peaks and the rushing streams in the valleys. But most of it was sharing the trip with Claire. We talked the whole way — and the miles flew. For the journeys of life to matter more than the destinations, companionship is key.
As the big snow of 2010 becomes a part of history we on the ground are left with its aftermath. We are still digging, still shivering, still feeding the birds. We are also learning the etiquette of the yield. Our roads are plowed now, and for that we are grateful. But there is not enough room on the road for two cars side by side, so one must give way. This is true for pedestrians (and dogs!), too, and was especially noticeable before our street was cleared. The one-lane footpath that was Fort Lee Street was only wide enough for one person at a time, so if neighbors were coming toward each other, the one closest to the smallest snowbank (or mailbox “dig-out”) stepped aside.
Seeing this ballet reminds me of a trip Tom and I took to Devon and Cornwall before we married. We stayed in a place called Old Walls and the roads we took to get there were the most impressively narrow ones I’ve ever seen. They were bordered by tall hedges and were barely one car’s-width wide. As we crept slowly down them in our borrowed Renault, an Austin Mini (or whatever it was) would zoom toward us like a bat out of hell. Every time, I braced myself for a head-on collision. But every time, at the last minute, those narrow-road veterans would dip into some nearly invisible turnout in the hedge, and we would be saved. The local drivers knew about these places all along, of course. Playing chicken with the tourists was their favorite sport.
This was a lesson in how not to give way. I’d like to think we’re adapting a more courteous approach here, that we’re learning to read the intentions of the car coming toward us, that we’re becoming flexible and patient. But then again, I’ve not left the house (except on foot) in a week. So it’s easier to believe in fairy tales.
