The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 6
I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song (of which we may, now and then, catch an echo); and that these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African savannah, where the First Man opening his mouth in defiance of the terrors that surrounded him, shouted the opening stanza of the World Song, “I am!”
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Living many miles from my office I “enjoy” a lengthy commute. Much of my commute is along Humptulips County’s freeways. Freeways are a practical means of travel, relatively quickly traversed during the early morning off-hours of my commute, and usually bloated with speed resistant traffic during the evening trip home so that my reverse commute is 30 to 45 minutes longer than my inbound one. As a means of everyday travel, freeways don’t possess much meaningful aesthetic, for we commuters use them as if they are little more than hand tools. It is only when I am off on an adventuresome lark with Helen to some eagerly anticipated destination that I find freeways to possess any aesthetic whatsoever, for then, and only then, they are shining pathways of anticipation regardless of prevailing weather conditions or traffic flow.
On my morning drive into work, the freeway’s straight lines and familiar curves are perfect for list-making in anticipation of the day’s chores. While I cannot ignore the road or the other drivers with whom I share the freeway during the pre-dawn hours in which I travel, the relative paucity of traffic usually allows for a commute without significant driving problems to be solved, thereby presenting the perfect time to prepare a plan for dealing with whatever challenges each particular work day presents. And once the daily duties are listed, ordered and folded into an acceptable management plan, the morning becomes a perfect time for listening to NPR and engaging in amazed contemplation of man’s myriad and mysterious vainglories.
The evening commute is quite a different affair. I long ago discovered that dwelling on the day’s activities on the way home is not a path I wish to walk. If my morning’s plan of attack was successful, there is usually not much merit in reconsidering the day’s business affairs; if my confidently prepared plan of attack failed miserably, further contemplation during the commute of the agonies of self-flagellation I have already endured at work does nothing other than to sour my mood even more than the failures themselves did. So, I have learned to use the trip home as a time to flip my Priorities Switch from “work” to “home” and to forget as much as I can the events of the work day.
I am reasonably successful at flipping this switch and the length of my commute assists significantly. I listen to music on the way home. In my humble opinion, whoever invented the 6 CD car player should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for he or she has done more to settle stress and help commuters avoid road rage than any other single thing I can imagine. Imagine the battalions of lives saved as a consequence! I can listen to most of a CD during a typical evening commute, and if the artistry is excellent and the music fine, I am mostly soothed by the time I arrive home. Helen has good reason not to object to the piles of CDs I seem to order each month, since they, in combination with the road, hold the power of reverse-transmogrification (see Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbs for graphic examples of transmogrification (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01P8ofUf-Zk) – and then simply use your imagination as to how it might work on me in reverse – or, better yet, ask Calvin).
As soon as it is feasible to do so on my way home, I exit the freeway and take the most rural back road available to me at that location. Depending upon my chosen commuting route (North and then East, or East and then Northeast), the back roads are either mostly suburban or truly rural. In either event, these back roads serve my transformational needs far better than the stress induced by the inevitable freeway lane-changer seeking to gain his or her average three car-length advantage achieved over the duration and length of my commute. This is not to say that there aren’t crazies driving the back roads, but their nuttiness is much more bearable when the roads are lined with trees, meadows, and farms rather than break-down lanes, stalled vehicles, and trash.
My favorite route home goes through a conservation zone graciously donated to the County by a local family. This is a truly rural experience, heightened by the presence of cows, second-growth timber, and meadows for a distance of approximately three miles. It even includes a trail head with parking. On sunny days such as we currently enjoy, those portions of the passage that lie through forest bring to life the poetical phrase “sun-dappled”, as selected leaves and pine needles are dramatically highlighted by such of the sunlight that finds its way to road level through the obscuring forest crown. On windy summer days, the leaves of deciduous trees flip upward to reveal their shy, summer-silver undersides. Depending upon whether I am passing through forested or meadowed portions of the dell, in rainy weather the condition of the road varies from thoroughly wetted pavement on which my tires hiss in time to the rainfall’s percussion, to crazy-quilted, wet-and-dry stretches with variable designs dependent for form and content upon the intensity of the rainfall and the relative density of the immediate overhead cover.
Driving through the conservation zone is as much a passage through time as through place. While there, I can imagine myself in any guise or period. I can just as easily be Robin Hood as Daniel Boone, a passenger in a covered wagon as one in a Model T or a Lexus, or a traveler in first growth, eastern forests in company with Chingachgook and his son Uncas as a hiker starting his or her day hike from the dell’s trailhead. For the dell is a place of transformational power, one of those sacred places gracing the planet where sky and earth meet in such a way as to produce magical properties capable of freeing and firing the human imagination. These are wide spots in the rivers of mysticism so brilliantly described by Bruce Chatwin in The Songlines.
There is another such magical place immediately north of our farm which I love to drive through on weekends, a place that transforms the immensities of a Northwest forest into the cloistered comfort of a tree-lined New England country lane. Unfortunately, this stretch of road does not lie on my usual route home from work, although there is a completely out-of-the-way detour that will bring me to it on those days when its call is utterly irresistible; a detour that has some plausibility as an excuse offering to Helen in the event of lateness home in the face of exceptionally bad traffic or significant road construction. I use it at least twice a year for commuting, but manage to go through it far more often on weekend adventures with Helen. She is as fond of this stretch of road as I am and I believe she understands its magical properties as well as I do.
It seems to me that there is something transformational in every road, and I have concluded that the amount of magic each road possesses is inversely proportional to the amount of money and energy spent by man to create it. A freeway may be a marvel of engineering, but it is possessed of the barest minimum of magic necessary to allow us to call it a road. A humble path through deep forest worn into existence by nothing more than the repeated passages of man and other animals over eons contains far more magic than the machine-formed freeway ever will. Graveled country roads are my true métier, for they possess just enough form to evidence their man-made aspect yet are simple enough to wield considerable magic as they wend through otherwise undeveloped land to their inevitable destination.
The magic of a road lies both in the mysteries of the land it serves and the destination it implies. No road is complete without both. The myriad possible combinations of land and destination make every road unique, even if its particular uniqueness is but a variation on a theme. Every road is worth traveling, for it offers the promise of discovery and discovery is what transforms us. And as many times as I have traveled our own particular country graveled road leading to the farm, the discoveries it has promised are not yet complete. For who knows what news, good or ill, I may find upon arriving home on any given evening or whether flocks of starlings or solitary robins will grace that day’s passage.
I love roads because they offer us the power of choice, but once we have chosen (and as long as we do not stray) a road defines our destination because all roads lead to, and end at, some particular place. And for this often weary commuter, home is a pretty damned fine destination – one for which the road prepares me afresh during each passage.
