48. The Open Road

I didn’t realize the beauty of the open road in America until I lived in the UK for awhile. It’s especially true when you live out west and you see signs that say “Next Gas 65 Miles.” Of course that means you have to be prepared, but generally we are. In the UK you can drive for some distance and only come away with vertigo because you have seen nothing but hedges and walls. And I can’t deny that that tunnel of green is pleasantly overlooked in the moors so that one hardly recognizes the existence of roads on the verdant landscape.

            But here in the states there are places you can drive endlessly over mountains and look over vistas to see the vastness sprawling before you and only an asphalt ribbon and maybe another car here or there to even let you know there have been people here. I have driven all across this country of ours and have been amazed that there is so much to see and explore driving down the open road. Who could imagine that a yellow diamond sign cautioning for curves ahead could present a beauty of freedom because it is riddled with bullet holes? I certainly never thought I could until I came home after a year in the UK and drove across the vast Columbia Plain of Central Washington. In all of my jet lagged exhaustion I saw that sign, those holes, that lone curve on a solitary road and I knew I was home. Of course I could chide the idiot who shot up the sign that someone’s hard earned tax dollars (MINE!) had paid for, but at that moment I probably would have been more likely to hug the guy and tell him how happy I was to be home. At that moment I was made fully aware of the vastness of my home and the open road I love to drive down at almost any opportunity.