Tonight, as I lay on my friend's driveway at 2:15am and the heat from the concrete warmed my entire body, I stared at the stars. I stared at the stars and thought back to August 2003, that one night when I was zipping through the New Mexico desert at night in my friend's Mustang Convertible (top down) on my first drive cross country. I remember being bundled up as the wind and desert night air nearly froze me to the core. I was looking backwards at the highway I knew we had driven on for hundreds of miles, the same that stretched ahead of us for hundreds more, barely making a turn or heading over a hill. There was nothing, nothing around us.
I had turned around so I was facing due east as the car sped west, staring at this light way out on the horizon. I couldn't figure out what it was. Going 90 miles an hour, a car would only pass us every 20 minutes or so. The light gleamed and disappeared. What was that, I kept repeating. Every once in a while lighting would flicker in the north from a storm miles and miles and miles away. I turned around and stared west, into the darkness ahead of us until I noticed the light in the rearview mirror. I turned behind us and stared. It was the moon, full, rising due east above the highway, casting it's bright light on the road we left behind.
Close to 2am my friend slammed on the brakes and began to pull off the road. What are you doing, I asked, wondering why he was taking me out into the middle of nowhere in a desert in the middle of the night. I want to look, he said. He pulled the car down the side of the road and turned it off. We pulled our hooded sweatshirts over our heads and grabbed the sleeping bag out of the back seat. We climbed out of the car and onto the hood of the car so the warm engine would keep us from freezing. We buried ourselves under the sleeping bag and poked our heads out and stared at the starts.
From horizon to horizon they stretched, and twinkled and shone in broad brushstrokes across the sky. Coyotes howled in the distance and I grabbed the blanket tighter. At 2:30am I was wide awake, blown away by the sheer adrenaline that pumps through your veins when you're looking at one of the most beutiful things you've ever seen in your life, from the fear that if anything happened to you at that moment no one would ever know, and from the overwhelming sense of not knowing where you would sleep that night or end up the next day or how you even got to exactly where you are at the time.
We were headed towards some dot - a town - we found on some map earlier that day. Generally we tried to stop and sleep around 2am, but we'd get distracted by sunsets or stars or just something cool on the side of the road we wanted to explore. By the time we abandoned our road-side sanctuary that particular night and headed to the dot on the map it was 3am. When we reached the dot it was nothing. It was just some intersection in the middle of nowhere that at some point in time might have been considered a town. There was no motel open, nowhere to eat, no gas station. Just a couple run-down buildings scattered about at this one intersection.
In this moment of what should have been panic, we laughed. We had two choices: drive to the next dot and hope that there would be something, some bed, some motel supervisor we'd awake from his slumber at the desk, or go back to the side of the road and sleep on top of the car with the coyotes.
We pushed on. I don't know why.
And I don't know why I thought about that specific night tonight, nearly two years later, thousands of miles away, laying in silence in a driveway in Potomac, Maryland.
***
Two years ago to this date I didn't know I would drive cross country. I didn't know I would do it twice, actually, in the last two years. I didn't know I would move to Los Angeles. I didn't know I would come back.
As hard as it can be - the not knowing - sometimes I think it's best. You don't know where you are on the side of the road, barely know what state you're in, don't know what lies in the universe you're staring up at from the hood of one of your best friend's cars, wrapped in the blanket of uncertainty, but yet are completely and totally at peace.
I had turned around so I was facing due east as the car sped west, staring at this light way out on the horizon. I couldn't figure out what it was. Going 90 miles an hour, a car would only pass us every 20 minutes or so. The light gleamed and disappeared. What was that, I kept repeating. Every once in a while lighting would flicker in the north from a storm miles and miles and miles away. I turned around and stared west, into the darkness ahead of us until I noticed the light in the rearview mirror. I turned behind us and stared. It was the moon, full, rising due east above the highway, casting it's bright light on the road we left behind.
Close to 2am my friend slammed on the brakes and began to pull off the road. What are you doing, I asked, wondering why he was taking me out into the middle of nowhere in a desert in the middle of the night. I want to look, he said. He pulled the car down the side of the road and turned it off. We pulled our hooded sweatshirts over our heads and grabbed the sleeping bag out of the back seat. We climbed out of the car and onto the hood of the car so the warm engine would keep us from freezing. We buried ourselves under the sleeping bag and poked our heads out and stared at the starts.
From horizon to horizon they stretched, and twinkled and shone in broad brushstrokes across the sky. Coyotes howled in the distance and I grabbed the blanket tighter. At 2:30am I was wide awake, blown away by the sheer adrenaline that pumps through your veins when you're looking at one of the most beutiful things you've ever seen in your life, from the fear that if anything happened to you at that moment no one would ever know, and from the overwhelming sense of not knowing where you would sleep that night or end up the next day or how you even got to exactly where you are at the time.
We were headed towards some dot - a town - we found on some map earlier that day. Generally we tried to stop and sleep around 2am, but we'd get distracted by sunsets or stars or just something cool on the side of the road we wanted to explore. By the time we abandoned our road-side sanctuary that particular night and headed to the dot on the map it was 3am. When we reached the dot it was nothing. It was just some intersection in the middle of nowhere that at some point in time might have been considered a town. There was no motel open, nowhere to eat, no gas station. Just a couple run-down buildings scattered about at this one intersection.
In this moment of what should have been panic, we laughed. We had two choices: drive to the next dot and hope that there would be something, some bed, some motel supervisor we'd awake from his slumber at the desk, or go back to the side of the road and sleep on top of the car with the coyotes.
We pushed on. I don't know why.
And I don't know why I thought about that specific night tonight, nearly two years later, thousands of miles away, laying in silence in a driveway in Potomac, Maryland.
***
Two years ago to this date I didn't know I would drive cross country. I didn't know I would do it twice, actually, in the last two years. I didn't know I would move to Los Angeles. I didn't know I would come back.
As hard as it can be - the not knowing - sometimes I think it's best. You don't know where you are on the side of the road, barely know what state you're in, don't know what lies in the universe you're staring up at from the hood of one of your best friend's cars, wrapped in the blanket of uncertainty, but yet are completely and totally at peace.
posted by AllDeTime at 1:48 AM
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