I’m driving a winding road laced by wounded street signs and solace. Creeping up on a curve I see Salvation stapled to a crooked post and suddenly my Tuesday commute turned spiritual, and — hospitable —, as only the South can make it.
The hills are green and roll like the eyes of an old friend I used to know, familiar and comforting but gone in a blink, whooshing past like a dream. Beyond the rolling Tennessee hills is the very thing that grounds me: a beautifully defaced blacktop. The washed out roads might as well be dirt. The broken asphalt that remains looks dry, as if it will crack under the pressure of my tire tread feeling the terrain with every inch I cover every second. The asphalt is narrowed by the natural eroding of flooding from the summer rains. The trenches fill with rainwater and eat at the asphalt, slowly, diligently, until the sides shrink and shrivel. In taking a curve a bit too closely my tire dips in and out of the road, which looks like a bite was chewed out of it.
Tied up in the turmoil of dust flying behind my tires is the recklessness and speed associated with back roads. Driving recklessly fast or dangerously slow are both necessary and natural when driving on a back road. I speed up on a curve so the butterflies fluttering outside feel like they’re in my stomach. As quickly as I gain on the curve I slow to a safe speed and take in the scene through every mirror around me, thinking about that sign “Salvation” and figuring I’ll be forgiven for my reckless commute. Driving on a back road grounds me to the world. I grip the steering wheel tight and then release, moving my fingers symmetrically from the inside out as if I were playing piano. Gripping the steering wheel I suddenly feel like the vehicle, — which I pretend is four-wheel drive — the broken asphalt, and I are inseparable. Suddenly, I realize we’re all connected and I’ve never experienced something like that so surreally, so spiritually.
As the butterflies in my stomach dip and rise, offset with the hill I just took too fast, I notice my surroundings; they fill my eyes as if they were a soundtrack to my ears. I see a man on his tractor bouncing and bobbing, I see a magnificent horse — white, but tainted by mud — snarl at the flies buzzing around him. I smell a manicured lawn — freshly cut grass that smells just like watermelon. I approach another curve and find myself asking for forgiveness involuntarily.
Ask forgiveness, not permission. That sufficed as my prayer as I took the curve too fast. I crossed over the double yellow lines to compensate for the curve, making it feel straight; truthfully, to go faster and feel a thrill. Hugging the center, aware that a driver of similar mind may be doing the same, I feel prepared to glide back to my rightful place on my side of the road, mindful though to not gravitate too far as to dip into the eroding side which transcends into a car’s demise as quickly as a blink. The art of driving on a dirt road is balancing risk and safety like a ferocious and elegant dance.
Suddenly it’s a different day and the same backroads are muted gray from the coming winter. Gray skies for a gray mind, I think to myself. The time that has past from commuting in the summer months to the Sunday reprieve on a golden winter day feels whimsically one; like a different life but also like no time has past at all. The drive is again spiritual and welcomes me like last time, like the hospitable stranger who offers a jump when broken down and throws in a Coke, which they had just picked up from the grocery, as if his stopping to help wasn’t kind enough.
The leaves on the trees have fallen and the wind blows every so often, making the leaves glimmer on the ground like pennies. The clouds hang low in the branches of the barren trees making it look like a fairytale, like someone — the wizard in a story or something— had dusted the branches with tufts of cotton, effortlessly but deliberately. I’m taking the curves so fast — and it’s early enough in the morning I hope no one minds — it feels like slow motion. Between the pennies and the trees I feel like I’m dreaming.
Then there’s conflict between the winter and the spring. They are pushing and pulling, trying to stake their claim for just a little bit longer. But some things stay the same, like the sanctified communion of reckless drivers on backroads, testing their limits and acknowledging their small size in the world across every double yellow line and every head nod through windshields whooshing by too fast. The art of driving on a back road requires a mutual understanding — among drivers and among holy surroundings — and it requires focus, appreciation, confession, trust, and belief in the power of finding salvation in something crooked.
