Speeding down a dark desert highway

“What road are you on?”

Darkness swallows me whole,

my heart, and my soul

as I drive the moonless western desert roads.

My headlights illuminate a quick white dash, then darkness.

The light then night;

Dot then dash;

Upon an asphalt road that melds into the shadowy desert landscape.  Together they become a cold and empty something connecting us under a moonless night.      

I drive the night with only the strange conspiratorial voices from my radio to accompany me.  The radio’s static whispers convincingly about otherworldly encounters.  As the hours’ pass, I begin to believe that the void surrounding me and my speeding car is hiding something, hiding some secret, hiding all secrets. 

I turn the radio off, but the voices in my head remain.

I speed up in a reflexive response to make the voices go away.  Now the dashes come quicker, the dashes become shorter, and the road’s message starts to appear.  Ignoring the danger, I gradually turn the wheel until I straddle the meridian strip.  My headlights cradle the broken white lines.  The grill on my car opens wide and consumes the lines.  A glance in my rear-view mirror confirms that the centerlines have vanished.  A gluttonous desire urges me on faster and faster — the soft green glow of my dashboard responds, Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour.  Speed transforms the dashes into a solid white line as I broach, ninety and one hundred miles an hour.  I feel like I am riding a rail, a white rail.  A childlike giddiness begins to rise from my gut to my throat, and a mild, manic laugh breaks the silence. 

Pushing the accelerator pedal to the floor, I look through the passenger window and see streaks of blue flash through the darkness of the night.  My speed and the lightness of my steering wheel convey the impression that my car is no longer in contact with the road.  Speed and darkness confuse my equilibrium.  I can no longer convince myself that I am traveling horizontally or vertically.  For the first time, I sense that my heart rate has matched the speed of my car.  It races.  Fueled by staccato breaths, every part of my body is fully engaged.  I ride the rail of the night.

Mile after mile, the strain of this hyper state takes its toll.  Exhaustion creeps through my body, and I feel my grip on consciousness start to slip.

My head dips, and my car begins to drift. 

With a two-wire jolt, I return to straddle the meridian.  Adrenalin clears my mind. 

Then moments later, I fade and jerk my vehicle back onto the centerline.  

Yet the monotony of the miles hypnotizes me back into sleep.  My muscle memory holds my car fast to the centerline, but only for a while.  Then my eyes slowly close.

Suddenly my brain twitches awake, and in a wide-eyed panic, I wrench the steering wheel hard.  Inertia responds by sending my car into a hundred mile an hour drift. 

My lizard brain takes control, and instinctively it turns into the drift.  My consciousness takes a backseat as reflexes hold the wheel.

After many tenuous moments, my lizard has brought me to safety.  I glide onto the shoulder.  

With just the murmur of the motor, I watch the desert dust settle before my headlights.  I sit in my seat and let my mind catch up.  I grab to open the door and pause. 

If I open the car door, what’s outside will get inside. 

Or if I open the door, what’s inside the car will get outside.  

The battle between my fear and my curiosity freezes me.  Then, I open the door with some involuntary spasms and follow it as it swings outward. 

My hiking boots crunch down on the asphalt shrapnel that covers the shoulder of the highway.  I breathe in the desert air.  My lungs fill with the faint aroma of sagebrush and desiccated death.  As my breathing slows, my memory returns.  I am on Nipton road and am heading to Nevada for a job interview. 

In this gloom, the light from my car creates a snow globe effect that captures and protects me from being consumed by a dark and empty desert.

In this protective glow, my fascination draws me to the center of this deserted road.  I crouch down to touch the dashes.  In the penumbra glow of my headlights, the dashes take on a three-dimensional quality.  The top layer is smooth, almost shiny.  I stroke it like I would pet a cat. 

Suddenly, like a cat, the centerline arches it back and starts to rise.  In stunned disbelief, I fall back and look up at this phantom.  Its rectangular outline begins to change.  It sprouts tiny arms and legs then a circular head pops out.  Upon its head, a fedora appears.  It looks down, tips its hat to me, and starts walking into the inky void of the desert.

Engaged in this perter normal event, I hadn’t noticed the next paler iteration rising from the empty desert road.  I crab crawl backward toward my car.  Frozen in amazement, I watch the parade of stick-like figures materialize from the road.  Like clowns from a tiny car, they keep coming and coming.  Their rectangular chrysalis stretch, tip their hats and saunter off into the desert.

Until.

The road is monochromatic black.

The toothless road now grins at me.   I lean against my car and rattle my head to make sense of the fading cavalcade of dash-men.  The “what and why” of what I’ve seen swirl like smoke in my consciousness

My ass plops down hard as my boots slide out from beneath me.  I cannot look away as the dash-men fade into unexplored darkness. 

And it comes to me. 

I was on the well-paved roads of my father and my father’s father.  Their roads have hypnotized us with the illusion of progress and ease.  Like sirens upon a black rock, they beckon us,

“Follow my road, and you’ll end up like me.”

“Just follow, and you’ll end up like we.”  

Yet all the road wants to do is break away from itself – To venture off; To discover, To create new roads. 

Like the dash-men of the road, I need to exit the roads forged by our fathers and create new roads – To follow the dash-men into the darkness and discover and develop my true path.

In the belly of a dark road, I have discovered the meaning of my heart and my soul. 

To create and not to follow. 

I tip my imaginary hat, and I am off to find my road.

Create your road and let your journey swallow you whole.

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