USA at 70 mph
I’ve been to places up and down the East Coast, Southern California, and driven around a bit in the Southwest. But having driven across the width of this country a few times recently, taking six days +/- instead of flying over in six hours, and taking a different route each time, I feel a little bit different. It feels different to be a person who has SEEN and KNOWS the different terrains of this country FIRSThand, instead of knowing ABOUT the country’s different terrains.
To be sure it’s not the in-depth experience one receives from living in various areas through the different seasons. And there’s a whole strip across the northern states I’m not confident to attempt in any season other than summer. Still, I’m no longer that person for whom much of the country’s land is an abstraction, a state’s colored shape on a map or a motto on a license plate.
I know the difference between states on the east coast where big trees are abundant, and the southwest where even a small bush struggles to exist. I’ve passed from areas where pastures of dairy cows are the norm to areas where it’s herds of cattle and where horse trailers are as common as tractors.
You can note the locomotive, the different kinds of cars, and how many there are, of a passing train at a railroad crossing on the east coast. Trains west of the Mississippi stretch to the horizon and have no end of identical cars. Should you see the front of a train it’ll have three or four locomotives and maybe even one or two in the middle. There are overpasses over tracks because one would age waiting for one of these trains to pass at a RR crossing.
Besides a new understanding of space and time, you acquire an understanding of altitude when you pass a sign that says, ‘ELEVATION 7842 FEET’, and you’re driving on a plateau, that’s ringed by mountains that reach way higher than that, and you know the peak on Whiteface is ‘only’ 4865 feet.
Once and a while you’ll pass a factory that’s as large as a neighborhood and has a parking lot as big as a small town and has its own multiple exit ramps. And since the population density is so sparse and the catchment area for employees is so very large, it becomes clear why people going to work pass like you’re standing still even though you’re already driving at ten above the limit.
I don’t know that I’m a substantially different person because of it, but I feel being my own primary source of these impressions gives me a facet I didn't have before.
PS: I made it to Laguna Woods Saturday and slept for 12 hours..
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