Highway 5 and I have had an intimate tumultuous relationship this month. I spent another 5 hours on her paved slick surface yesterday attempting to beat the heat as I drove south. She's been showing me her pleasures and delights. A field full of datura plants, their white trumpets singing in the late morning sun. The snob and I tease the big rigs with her top down, my blonde hair blowing in the light. They blow their horns and spill bits of their loads of tomatoes, onions, garlic or carrots. I see their spilled load at the side of the road and think of stone soup. I could stop and make road soup. I see the bloody death of smashed tomatoes by the side of the road. The orange horns of hundreds of carrots sticking up from the top of the truck. I stop at my favorite places: Mike's Roadhouse Cafe, the Beacon Station, Willow Ranch. I know where the rolling hills turn to the San Gabriel's (it's by Gorman). I feel the change - in smell and by feeling as I leave the bay area, drive down the San Joaquin Valley and then cross the hills again. I love the dry golden hills. The grape fields with oil wells. The sparkling blue water of the aqueduct.
I think about what we as humans are doing to this planet. I've been an environmentalist all my life. But how the hell can I as a puny human know how the earth wants to evolve? Maybe we humans are here to do exactly what we are doing? And a kick back to "the good old days" is like absorbing your little toe - or stopping the development of your ability to perceive with your eyes or fingers. How can we know how the earth even sees it's self? Can an ant have any concept of how I see it? Or can I have any concept of how an ant sees it's self - or can I have a concept of how YOU see yourself?
The road and I have these conversations. She tells me stories. I ask questions. I watch the scenery and drive too fast and listen to music too loud. It echoes back to some words I wrote in my past: "tires kissing several highways." The connection I have with the road is an intimate connection. I feel it in the rubber of my exoskeleton. I experience it in the wind. I feel a certain connection, freedom and delight in the drive. Because after all, the journey is the destination and as sure as time keeps passing, we will all reach our destination eventually.
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