The Road

The Road has no reason or logic – the span of highways and blue routes are the arteries of transportation. For this, the road has reason and logic, but this is only in its infrastructure. To move along these arteries and begin to understand the Road is when the self-realization happens that the Road has no reason or logic.
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Steinbeck, in my mind, coined it the best, he said in Travels with Charley:
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years descried me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this smatter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.”
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
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In personal humble experience, the Road has been kind and adventurous by pushing and pulling me across. I’ve learned not to fight it, but rather to accept the nature of a journey. The Road to me is different than a vacation. A vacation is resting and relaxing while the Road is a child of its own. I find serenity in the chaos of the Road and the freedom with each waning mile. To wander without direction does not necessarily mean you are lost.