Summer Was a Good Time To Be On the Road
posted at 12:11 am
on Jul. 5, 2012
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We drove south, heading towards the border, south, towards the sunshine and the lake.
The road was straight as a skewer, cutting through fields of vibrant green stalks. We headed south, but the wind was going east, blowing in gusts that didn’t even feel like gusts, because there was no break, no pause for breath, just strong hard cold air intermixed with even harsher bursts of cold air, pushing us off the left side of the road.
The Jeep Liberty got hot in the sun; its dark brown paint sucked up the sunlight faster than the air could drain the heat away.
Inside the cab, the air was hot, and we peeled of layers of jackets and sweaters, sitting in loose t-shirts and baking slowly. The sunroof whistled and moaned, covering up any music we played if it lacked intensity. So we played big rock music, country with twang, anything that could battle with the trumpetting wind that endlessly shoved against us like a drunk pushing past us on a bus, the wind heading down from the Rocky Mountains, over my shoulders and out across the flattest parts of the Earth.
As this wind passed over and through the green stalks, the fields bent and scintillated because of it, invisibly, epically. The undersides of the wheat were a duller green than the reflective emerald tops, and you could see the waves of air crashing and smashing the stalks, and imagine they were white caps on this churning chlorophyl lake, with land sharks circling below the soil. Tractors sailed across the fields and barns and houses formed an archipelago of shelter in the sunny summer storm.
Tiny cows reflected white in the long distance, standing out from far, far away because of the brightness of the sun. They looked so clean, unreasonably so. Water on the ground in shallow puddles was pushed to the end of sloughs by the wind, water almost piling up against the shoulder of the road, against the base of hills, permanent ripples on their faces.
And still the concrete stretched out ahead of us, as we bowled down the wide double lane towards an endless split spare, just enjoying the feeling of being free. Of heading to the lake. Of having someplace to go, but no real push to have to get there, other than the possibility of a steak dinner if we managed to beat the sunset, easy enough the twilight still so far away.
Summer was a good time to be on the road.
