In between
Cheryl Unruh
Originally published 01:19 p.m., January 8, 2008
Updated 01:19 p.m., January 8, 2008
Eastbound on U.S. 56 in central Kansas, I glance into my side mirror and see the buttery sun, liquid at the horizon, vanish for the day.
On a December evening, I am traveling alone, headed home to Emporia. I am between places, between here and there.
Around me, the sky clings to blue for a while, but its grasp loosens and the light runs away the sun. As daylight escapes behind me, I drive toward the dark end of the road.
When the sun leaves this plane of earth, color goes with it. Darkness lands, turning the world to a grainy charcoal, then black, and my range of vision closes in on every side.
Overhead, the three-quarters moon keeps watch on the roadway, that moon surrounded by a posse of stars.
I drive my car into the world of deep mysteries, where nothing seems to exist outside the reach of headlight beams, where trees dissolve into the landscape, where the topography on either side levels out into one thin line.
I turn off the radio and hear, feel, the hum of road noise. Winter pulls the drone of the tires into the cab of the car. Every sound echoes in the cold, in the dark.
Highway noise at night brings back childhood memories of curling up in the backseat of the family car. The lullaby of tires can also put a driver to sleep — but that’s not the place that the driver should go.
The window feels like ice. December air pushes its way through the glass on my left while the heater exhales warm air to my right.
In this tunnel of night, when another car approaches, its headlights capture my eyes and I fight being drawn into a trance.
My car and I have slipped into that other world, the world of in between departure and arrival, the world of being in movement, of not belonging to a particular place or time.
As I drive through the night, I imagine myself sailing through outer space. In the distance, galaxies of stars turn out to be small towns: Canton, Galva, Hillsboro, Marion. I pass by each cluster of streetlights briefly before entering another canyon of black space.
Darkness swallows barns and tractors, round hay bales and distant shelterbelts. When you can’t see the farmhouses, driveways and power poles that you’re passing, there’s no sense of making progress. Yellow stripes in the center of the road repeat themselves like a treadmill belt.
I follow the familiar roads, although in the dark it’s hard to tell one from another. Each highway is a straight line, with only a few curves for distraction along the way.
Headlights scan the ditches but you wouldn’t be able to see a deer until it’s too late, so you take your chances with wildlife after dark. You keep an eye out, but mostly just hope for the best.
In Chase County, a train whistle startles me. I glance to the right, see its white beam weaving through the line of trees and I pause to wonder why the possibility of train/deer accidents has never occurred to me before.
Other vehicles on the highway are anonymous, their colors indistinguishable, the occupants unseen. These cars are merely headlights that zip past my left shoulder.
Out in the vast wilderness of night, there’s a feeling of separateness. I’m an individual unit, cocooned in the cabin of the car, cold leaking in through the window, heat blowing from the dash, headlights shining on the road, blackness everywhere else.
While hurtling through the void, I am between places, in limbo. I am between the past and the future. I am un-tethered, free-floating.
And floating isn’t a bad place to be. Sometimes it feels good to be ungrounded, unrestricted, wandering in the world of all possibilities.
Under the moon and the starry, starry sky, all I have to do is keep the car between the yellow line and the white one and let the highway pull me home.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net. • Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
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