Open road

There is a particular stretch of road I drive whenever a season ends. Two lanes, mountains in the distance, the sun setting somewhere out beyond a horizon that takes its time. I do not always have a destination. Sometimes the road is the destination. Sometimes I just need to be the one driving for a while, instead of the one being driven.

The open road is a threshold image, and thresholds matter more than most people allow.

A threshold is the moment you leave one room of your life and enter another. Most modern lives have erased their thresholds. You wake in one room and reach for the phone and the entire world rushes in before your feet have touched the floor. There is no doorway. There is no pause. There is no marker between the dream and the day. People wonder why they feel unmoored. They have removed every door from the house.

The road gives the door back. Gas tank full. Window cracked. Music, or no music. The hum of tires on asphalt that has been somebody's good idea for a hundred years. There is no arrival. There is just the going. The going is the medicine.

I have done the long drive after a death in the family. I have done it after the end of a relationship that ought to have ended a year sooner. I have done it after a season of overworking. I have done it for no reason at all, which is sometimes the best reason. Every time, something settles. The body uses the steady motion the way a child uses a rocking chair. The grief gets quieter. The thinking gets clearer. The next decision becomes obvious in a way it absolutely was not, sitting still in a kitchen.

There is wisdom in the going that is not available in the staying.

This is not about geography. You do not have to live near a desert highway. A bridge in the right direction works. A long bus ride works. A train at dusk works. A bicycle on a road you do not usually take works. The form does not matter. The threshold matters. The willingness to be in motion, alone, with no one to perform for, for as long as the inside of you needs.

Most arrivals are not worth slowing down for. A handful are. The road is how you find out which is which. The good arrivals announce themselves on the way. The bad ones make you wish you had kept driving.

The sun in the photograph is setting, not rising. I prefer it that way. A sunrise asks you to begin. A sunset gives you permission to close the day with grace and let tomorrow be tomorrow's problem.

Drive when the inside of you needs driving. Do not justify it. Do not turn it into content. Just go. The road is older than us. It knows what it is doing.