Road Trip

Noticed an old associate asking, on social media, about taking a long road trip.
Cross country style, by car.  Driving.
Those "have you done it" and "would you, should I" kinda questions...
Maybe questions I have answers for, but hesitate to provide.


Quick accounting puts me at a minimum of a couple trips across and a few top to bottom drives, total.
More than that, really, but I have never really put too much thought into it.


There is a sense of scale that gets lost when you simply fly over the fly over states.
A loss of the sensory, for expedience, I suppose.

Rolling over the super slabs isn't much better, but you get a grander sense of things.
Not the gritty, granular reality of a given spot, unless you get past the end of the off ramp...
Past the chain gas stations, the Applebee's/Chili's/Fridays strip mall lots.
Those look the same everywhere, though you don't see that maybe, 'til you've taken the trip.
It takes some work to find the pith of a given pull-off from the highway.
You get an impression from the drive, at least...
Like when you first meet somebody and guess what they're about.
Sense.  Impression.
Gut instinct shit, that you have to be present to have at all...


Maybe it was too much Kerouac crack in my younger days.
Or the lingering longing of a small town boy for adventure, still less than satisfied.

Opening up an atlas is as good as reading some great novel, to me.
Follow those lines, pick out places and names of towns, dream of destinations.
Wondering what the local accent might sound like, or if the smell of summer cut grass here is the same as there.


There is that mediation, after some hours driving...
When you shut up and see the landscape like a movie rolling out in front of you.
It quiets my mind, for the effort of taking it all in, for figuring it out.
Finding a way to be present and passing through, at the same time.

Road trips have always been good for me.
They have not all been smooth or ever quite easy.  There is always some thing.
The thing that makes you learn, along with the other general good times ramble tamble.



I like road trips...
Probably would never advise anybody to take one...
You gotta want to go.