Driving to Oregon this weekend I realized how I’ve adjusted to the island highway. Give me more than two lanes and I begin to feel overwhelmed. Navigating I-5 seems like a nightmare. Too many lanes. Too many trucks. Too much traffic. My shin began to hurt from the stop-and-go, an unfamiliar exercise.
I realized how I missed poking around on slow-poke roads, driving past farmlands or fruit stands at a speed where I can read the signs. Give me some gravel roads and guitar music and I’ll be set. Just plug yer ears as I start singin’ ’bout dem mountain mamas.
Okay, I’m kidding a bit. Never have thought of myself as a country girl and the more remote areas of this county have seemed unfamiliar territory. I don’t own a tractor. Never been to West Virginia. I do enjoy asphalt and concrete and a little city life.
But there’s nothing like driving through strange terrain to make me appreciate where I belong. Nothing like hotel rooms to make me long for a bed whose contours I created, faded sheets that speak history, and a comforter that I’ve clutched through winter nights. I have my moments when I wished I lived somewhere else. But there’s nothing like visiting somewhere else in space to make me cherish the pocket of the planet that I call my own. There’s nothing like a road trip to make me realize there’s no place like home.
Take me home, country roads.