Go West Redux

My love is in league with the freeway/Its passion will ride, as the cities fly by
And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night/And the questions in thousands take flight
            Robert Plant, Big Log

Driving appeals to me on a level that, on the surface, is difficult to explain.  Americans have a yearning to drive and have always had a fascination with cars and the miles they cover.  I have friends from Europe who do not see the attraction of driving and are surprised at the distances we will traverse simply to go to work.  On vacation, Americans pack the kids and the car and head off to destinations far and wide.  I will travel hours to reach a quiet respite to pitch a tent and enjoy nature.  However, from the advent of the automobile, Americans have sought far away ports of call and I am infected by our national wanderlust.  With this article, I’d like to explain my fascination with driving. 

The most attractive aspect of driving on the open road is the feeling of control.  On a plane or in a car with someone else driving, I’m on edge and cannot truly relax.  However, behind the wheel, I control the speed, the direction and the purpose.  Seldom in life do we experience such a level of control.  The other drivers are a problem but on the open road, away from the cities and the small avenues cutting through congested neighborhoods, even this obstacle is minimized.  Our entire lives are in pursuit for control and when driving, it can be quite a heady experience.

A second aspect to driving pangs at an instinct that takes up back to the beginnings of our country – exploration.  The highways and interstates compel us to confront those things that make regions, states and towns unique.  Granted, in these days, it is difficult to find the distinctive but they are there.  The feeling of exploration in a day when so much is known to us is a challenging thing to stumble across.  Yet, the power that driving holds for me is that, indeed, there is something to be discovered and experienced.  I’m envious when I read stories of long ago heroes and adventurers climbing and traversing virgin territory.  When I joined the military, part of my excitement for my time there was in the adventure.  I believe that we, as a society, need the unknown to push us and demand more from ourselves. 

Lastly, I grew up in a state that was and is densely populated and covered by trees or concrete.  In contrast, the wide open plains dissected by the highways are an exhilarating experience.  I once took a drive from Denver to Kansas City, across the center of the Sunflower State.  Kansas, for all of its attributes, does not strike the casual observer as terribly exciting or interesting.  However, for myself, the openness and the lack of population is evidence of times past.  I’ve told many of my friends of that drive across Kansas.  I hit the border of Colorado and Kansas around four in the morning.  I pulled over and realized, with no cars, no nearby towns and only the road suggesting modernity, I had traveled back in time.  I laid on the hood of my car and took in my surroundings.  The dark sky with its bright stars was clear to see.  The wind intertwined with the grains of grass, wheat and other crops around me as distant houses could barley been seen.  It was the same sensation I felt on board a ship while in the military, staring out into days and days of open water.  There is nothing like the feeling of inconsequence.  As much as control is a part of the experience, the scale of my existence in the face of such wide open places is telling.

This summer, I'm driving to California and will confront the majesty of the Rocky Mountains and the desolation of the western deserts.  I will be at the wheel and the world will be before and around me.  I will take the trip that Americans have since the early 1800s.  I will experience the expanse of the plains and the desolation of the desert, the awe of the mountains and the exhilaration of viewing the coastal waters.  In an 1865 editorial of the New York Tribune, writer Horace Greely advised, “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”  This summer, I will have my chance to follow the advice as sound today as it was in the 19^th-century.