Meditations on the Road - Part One

I realize that the title of this blog has two possible meanings, which may be confusing.  To be clear, I’m not actually meditating while on the road, although I expect to be doing a lot of that later this year.  But I am meditating about what “the road” means to me.  I use quotation marks to suggest the common mythological meaning of the term in American culture rather than the literal definition.  “The road” of modern myth is the great expanse of asphalt etching the North American landscape on which one enters the unknown, transforms, encounters new places and people, has adventures and redefines one’s self.  Being on “the road” is the act of placing yourself in the passenger seats of convertibles piloted by Ulysses, Christopher Columbus and Meriwether Lewis and rocketing down highways and byways with the wind in your hair.  Don Quixote shouts directions from the back seat.  John Cage controls the traffic lights and Yoko Ono paints the signs.  There are no seat belts.

I spent a lot of time on the road – in the more literal sense - when I was growing up, mostly riding in cars with my parents and sometimes my older brother.  Those were the days when air travel was expensive and less widely available, and it was uncommon for whole families to fly together.  Because we lived at various times in different regions of the U.S., all of which were a long way from my parents’ families’ homes in northwest Mississippi, we covered thousands of miles annually driving to and from the Delta.  Our vacation travel was also always by auto.  Some of my clearest memories of childhood trips are not about the destinations themselves, but about the scenery and weather and accomodations along the way.  A motel with a nice pool – that, to me, was paradise.  With all that practice scooting across the earth at highway speeds, it was natural that I continued to travel a lot as an adult, and was never intimidated by driving long distances.

When I was a graduate student, one of my favorite then-contemporary writers was Jack Kerouac.  From his autobiographical novel “On the Road” I gained the impression that hitchhiking across the country was no big deal.  I was inspired by Kerouac to venture out from Ames, Iowa with nothing but a loosely-filled Boy Scout backpack, about $40 in cash and my thumb in the air.  A couple of days later I found myself on the coast of Maine.  How I got there exactly is a long tale and I couldn’t begin to do justice to the subject here.  Suffice it to say that when that trip was over, Kerouac had nothing on me except fame and book royalties.   Naivety can be an asset if it doesn’t kill you, and it’s almost a prerequisite for the best kinds of road trips.  I had naivety in spades back then, and probably still do.

Now I’m preparing for the road trip of a lifetime, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  Only a couple of more months until D-Day.  In the days leading up to that, I’ll have a few more things to say about “the road.”