I love driving. Regardless of what gas prices may be, I never give a second thought to getting in a car, van or truck, and starting to drive. Whether its going to a job and finding a different way of getting there, going for a Sunday drive with the family and exploring new areas of our state, or traveling to a distant locale, the sound of tires rolling over pavement (and sometimes dirt roads) is music to my ears. I feel like I have written about driving before, but if I have, it needs revisiting. This past weekend I drove up to Vermont to cut some firewood for the summer camping season and make sure our property was set and ready to go for when our whole family goes up on Memorial Day. The drive up on Friday was glorious. My goal was to time it perfectly so that I didn't hit any traffic. For once, it worked. Most times, I will hit at least five minutes of traffic somewhere along the route, but not this past Friday. I left around 8:30 in the morning and 3.25 hours later, I was in Vermont. I enjoy driving with other people because it makes the drive seem to take a little less time. Yet I also enjoy driving by myself with my two dogs in the back of the van. Driving is soothing to me. I let my mind wander as my eyes take in the road ahead of me, and I can think. I know, I can think at any point in time, but when I am in a vehicle driving, thinking is made easier with fewer distractions. On the way up to Vermont, I must confess, my though process wasn't extravagant, deep, or other worldly. I thought about my weekend ahead and what I wanted to get done at our campsite. Still, that 3.25 hours was relaxing in a way that driving to work amidst crazy Connecticut drivers is not. So I thought about the campsite, cutting down wood, and building a nice fire. I watched the quaint little towns along the way fly past and thought about the highway system in our country and the immense foresight it took to create the network of roads linking every corner of our country. Running a four lane highway through Vermont and its mountainous terrain must have taken a long time. For surveyors to figure out the best route; where to cut through mountains and where to build bridges, is beyond my comprehension. And to have those roads, built over 60 years ago at this point, is a testament to the skill and drive it took to build them. I applaud those surveyors, builders, but most of all Eisenhower who came up with the enormous interstate highway system. And yet, while highways are an excellent way of getting from one point to another in a shorter period of time than it would take to drive all back roads, there is a lot that can't be seen from the highway. The small towns and the people who populate them, are missed. We can now bypass the base upon which our country was built. How often do we forget about those towns and the treasures they possess? Too often it seems these days.
My ride home, after a long weekend of downing two sixty foot trees, cutting, splitting, and stacking them, was a different animal all together. I never leave Vermont to come home earlier than lunch time. As much as I try, cleaning up the campsite and packing things away always takes a while. So tired and dazed, I loaded up on caffeine around lunch time, and began the journey home. I didn't drive quite as fast as I did on my way up, but still made it in about the same time. I only hit about 5 minutes of traffic along the way. Not too bad. Watching the world go by at 70 mph, I sat dazed through Vermont and it wasn't until I was about to enter Massachusetts that I believe I had my first conscious thought of the drive. I saw a sign that said, "Entering the Pioneer Valley". I do not know the significance of the Pioneer Valley or what historical event took place there (if one even did). But it did spark a thought deep within the recesses of my tired mind. I began thinking about history and the amount of history that our part of the country has. The Northeast is where the roots of our country as we know it today were planted and from there spread south and west to encompass all of the current United States. From the Mayflower and its settlers who crossed the Atlantic to Paul Revere and the infamous Minutemen, New England has it all. I thought then about California and how relative to the North East, their history doesn't run quite as deep. After thinking that, I paused and reflected on how unfair that statement really was. California has just as much history as the North East, it just may not be "our" history. By "our", I mean the United States history as we know it, not the history that preceded our country. Many times people will forget that "history" means "the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present...". This means that history doesn't start when we settled this country, history reaches farther back to the native American tribes before us, the Spanish from Mexico who lived in California, and everyone else before us who had an impact on the land we now call our own. While I can not speak for other countries, in the United States it seems as if we consider history to encompass the time from when our ancestors settled here to the present. We rarely consider what was here before us and how that may have impacted the lives of people centuries ago. So when I had the thought that California doesn't have the history that the Northeast does, I more meant that it doesn't have "our United States history". Ultimately, I was incorrect in my thought process, but had the time driving home to think it all through. The wonders the open road has to offer us are plentiful if we take the time to enjoy them. Till my next road trip, whenever that may be, I will take my short drives and enjoy them to their fullest.
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