The Drive
The grass and trees fly by at 6o miles per hour. The glass window against which my head rests is warming with the sun; a sun still making the climb to its peak for the day. Inside our Japanese-made hunk of metal and rubber, the temperature is controlled, but the air is stuffy. Outside, the air seems to be crisp and pleasant. The trees, most of which reside in the pine family, both divide and flank the highway, casting tall shadows over the north and south paths. The natural towers, however, do not continue on into a seeming abyss, as they might once have. Instead shopping malls, office buildings, neighborhoods, or land cleared for one of the three lie behind only five or six rows of forestry. The interstate tree line seems to want to provide a metaphor for much of today’s natural world: if you don’t look past the initial layer, everything is beautiful.
Nevertheless, the sun beats down warm on the road, probably a little too warm for this time of year, but we’re in the south, so we’ll let it slide. Two or three times, a bridge grants a break in the treeline. Each time, the water underneath us reflects the sun like a ripply mirror, only to be broken by the emergence of a fish or the penetration of a bird. The huge expanse of these waterways can take one’s breath away, still knowing that the wet domain must end somewhere.
The trials of a long drive eventually consume us, forcing a stop at a roadside gas station. Despite the trash on the sides of the road, and the somewhat polluted smell, the air feels beautiful. It truly is too warm for a mid February day, but how can one complain when the sun’s touch feels so pleasant on the skin. The beauty of the elements forces us to stay outside for a bit longer, adding five more dreaded minutes to the already never-ending drive.
Eventually we muster up the courage to retake our seats and finish the journey. The climate attempts to mimic our moods as the trek goes on, greying and dampening as we go. Eventually, the sun no longer warms the window on which my head rests, making it cold and uncomfortable. The clouds give way to rain, darkening the pavement underneath us. The waterways over which we cross no longer glisten in the sun, but rather give way to the tiny, breaching droplets coming from above. There is a different beauty in this, I assume. I prefer the sun. Hours later, the joys of our advent are met with an almost literal cold slap to the face. The climate has shifted, with the clouds and rain, from warm and welcoming, to chilly and bleak. If the weather had been truly mimicking our moods, the sun would again be falling warm against the earth, but the weather has a mind of its own. We’ll simply have to deal with the cold.
