Taking the Long Road
SOMETIMES I SCOFF at the American notion of the "open road," the myth that driving is intrinsically connected to freedom and the frontier. I can't put my finger on why exactly it bothers me. It probably has something to do with the linkage of liberty with gasoline....
The truth is, I used to love to drive. I distinctly remember one trip, when I was a college student at the University of Tulsa, in Oklahoma. Moving relatively far away for college meant relatively regular trips up and down Interstate 35. It meant trips west on Highway 412 to visit old friends in Enid, Oklahoma, where I lived as a young child. And eventually it meant trips east on 412 to visit my now-wife at her college. But I also drove plenty of miles just to clear my head. Usually this meant tooling aimlessly around Tulsa, or maybe to a neighboring town. One time, though, I drove all the way to Stillwater at 10 o'clock at night.
Stillwater, home of Oklahoma State University, is about 70 miles west of Tulsa. I don't remember if something particular had happened to send me on the trek. I just remember that it was late at night, and I needed to do some thinking. I almost certainly listened to country music. And my only stop in Stillwater was at a Sonic.
For some reason, this trip has remained firmly lodged in my memory. I suspect it goes back to leaving Enid when I was 6. Most of the people in Enid were Oklahoma State fans, and most of the kids I went to kindergarten with ended up going to a small local college or to OSU. I think that trip sticks with me because it was a sort of crossing of the threshold, from where my life had taken me back to where my life might have gone. The version of my life that passed through Tulsa was very different from the version of my life that would have gone through Stillwater. And yet, those two versions nearly intersected geographically. And maybe in that trip what I needed to do was pull up to the precipice of that other version, look out for a few minutes, and then get back in my car.
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In the grand scheme of things, my current home in northwest Iowa is remarkably close to where I grew up, in eastern Iowa. I'm once again bordering a very different alternate reality.
And yet, my new Iowa home feels very far away from my old one. It feels more rural, more isolated. The case in point is my commute from my farmhouse in Iowa to the middle school where I teach in South Dakota. I drive 57 miles--one hour--each way. The vast majority of the trip is spent on two long, straight, 55-mile-per-hour highways. I pass through precisely zero towns. The only two gas stations on the trip are the Casey's and BP that compete on a corner a couple of blocks from the school.
This is the geography of my life ever since I moved here three months ago.
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At least once or twice a week, I'm introduced to a new face, and almost inevitably the conversation turns to where I live, where I work, and the distance between the two. I get a range of reactions. Almost no one just moves on. Some wonder about all that tedious time spent in the car. Some fret about how the winter weather will impact the drive. Others simply relate the commute to their own commutes, or their spouse's commutes.
I'll confess (on my blog, in passive-aggressive midwesterner style), that I don't like these conversations. I understand why people like to talk about long commutes. After all, I lived in New Jersey -- where long commutes are badges of honor -- for a decade. The thing is: when people talk about the hour-each-way drive I make each day, it doesn't feel like they're talking about a commute, or even like they're talking about the boring geography of rural Iowa. It feels like they're commenting on my life.
See, my commute isn't some random stroke of bad luck foisted upon me. My commute is the result of my choice to start my working life as a journalist, and my choice to switch gears and devote myself to teaching. It's a consequence of how, as a second-career teacher, I really wanted to work at a district that shares my philosophy. It's due to my choices to marry my wife and to honor her expertise by living in a place where her career can prosper, too.
My commute today is intrinsically tied to a complex web of choices I've made throughout my life. Choices that took me to Tulsa and Tuebingen, to Princeton and Camden, to Iowa and South Dakota. It's the same string of choices that sent me soul-searching in Stillwater on a wide open Oklahoma night all those years ago.
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There was a moment, not long after my wife accepted her job, when, after an evening spent poring through the picayune details of state teacher licensing requirements, it occurred to me that I might not be able to get a teaching job when we moved; that the reinvention of my life that was my entry into the teaching profession might just be a one-year detour. A few months later, I was standing in the stairwell of the Princeton Public Library when I got the call offering me a job at the one school district I thought would be a truly great fit.
Teaching does not weigh lightly on one's mind. All those hours in the car give me time for much-needed reflection, time to plan, to decompress, and sometimes, to listen to country music. But I don't spend any of that time looking back. I'm aware of the alternate realities lying just beyond the horizon, but I drive past them without a second look.
I don't know that the open roads of northwest Iowa and southeast South Dakota represent freedom, but, for me at least, they do represent some kind of cosmically mediated self-determination.