ROAD TRIP

On this typically rainy, windy Scottish evening, I have wrapped in a blanket on the sofa with the dogs snoring nearby.  I have put a CD on low, lit some candles and am settled in for a few chapters of Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.  The CD is Seal’s “Seal IV” which I haven’t listened to in a few years because, simply, I couldn’t find it after I moved into this house.  Searching for something else in an unpacked box today, I found a CD carrier which had Seal and all the other CDs which I thought I had lost – everything from Patrick Bernard to The Blue Nile. 

White Line Fever

Just as I come to a passage in Tharp’s book about memory, a mood tone sets  in, from Seal’s music, and suddenly I’m back in the USA, driving down a full-moon highway somewhere between Denver and Upper Michigan in my white Jeep.  It’s a hot summer night and the air conditioner in the car is set on high.  Seal is on full tilt (“We’ve got to keep this world together got to keep it moving straight…”) my blues-sensitive dog Shaka croons to the music in the passenger seat, and I am buzzing with being alive and free.  I feel elated from the full moon energy, an overload of caffeine and a touch of what truckers call “white line fever”.  I have been, by this time, driving about 11 hours straight and am wide awake, not ready to stop.

***

This trip took place during a period of grieving for my husband, who had died the previous year.  A road trip was something I felt I needed, to help shake me out of the reclusive mode which had begun to frame my days.  I didn’t really want to get out and socialise – I hadn’t answered the phone in months - but I needed to get out of the world we had created together and which I now inhabited like a ghost.

A road trip was also something I had wanted to do since my twenties.  In fact, in my novel (Journey From the Keep of Bones) which came out the same year as this trip (written four years earlier), I sent a couple of my characters on my fantasy road trip, along part of Route 66, as a way of fulfilling my own desire.

Now I was actually doing it! It wasn’t all along Route 66, but it was old highways and new interstates, the traffic flowed easily - and I was free.  Grief-crying part of the way and singing part of the way, moving with whatever mood the highway took me through.  I had a vague itinerary, a road atlas and no deadlines.  I was also working on a book at the time, so recorded my thoughts and drafted passages into a miniature dictaphone as I drove along.

I simply went from moment to moment, whim to whim on that trip.  For example, one day I suddenly had a hankering to hear some Frank Sinatra.  I have no idea where that came from, he wasn’t one of my favourites but…I pulled into a Wal-Mart and ran in and bought a couple of his CDs.  For the rest of my 18-day journey, I rotated three artists on the CD player:  Seal, Sinatra and Annie Lennox. 

Human and Canine Memories 

The Seal CD has obviously imprinted that trip into the folds of my memory.  The beat of that music is conducive to driving, his voice compelling, the lyrics weave stories.  Tonight I hear certain phrases of his music, certain notes, transitions, one lyric – and I am transported, back in the Jeep, back on the road. 

Seal sings “Uh! Let me roll!” and his music gives me a sensory recollection of a moment – pulling into a drive-through window for a coffee, the smell of it filling the car.  The anticipatory silence between two songs makes me suddenly recall stopping to let Shaka out to pee at a funky gas station in the middle of nowhere on the return trip home.  He begins to bark and excitedly scans the place as we pulled in, and I realise he is remembering that we stopped here almost three weeks prior, at the start of our trip.  He met another dog that day, had an enthused canine encounter.  He’s hoping to meet that dog again. 

Seal sings “love is what I need to help me know my name…” and I marvel at the lovely old covered bridges as I drive through Iowa.  I recall thinking that someone should make a movie about the area -- and then I am speeding past a sign informing me that these are “The Bridges of Madison County”.  Clint Eastwood already had that idea.

I stayed at several motels during the trip but I only remember two.  One was found late at night on the outskirts of Milwaukee near the airport.  It was cheap, the walls were thin, the room miniscule and thread-bare.  I walked a few blocks and found a bar that served hamburgers and bought a couple for myself and Shaka.  Back in the motel room we curled up on the bed together and ate them out of a brown paper sack.  I can still remember the mustard, pickles and onions, and how I deposited the wrappings in a garbage can in the lobby, so the smell of onions wouldn’t disturb our sleep. 

Edgy Motels

I puzzle over why I remember that particular evening in the Milwaukee motel.  It has something to do with the feeling of freedom and anonymity.  Such a funky, edgy place to stay, even the watering hole was questionable, judging by the hunched-over characters planted on the bar stools.  Neither were places I would go into, in my ordinary life.  But I could allow myself to do so on this adventure which was all about spontaneity.

I also remember it because I was so proud of having driven into that city late at night without getting confused or lost, and finding a place to stay, all on my own impetus.  Big city driving was something I dreaded, and this road trip forced me to push through that anxiety a few times, for the sake of the journey.  The whole trip was magical - no problems, no car trouble, just smooth long distance driving in musical solitude with one of the best canine companions I have ever had.  (And, I found out later when I phoned my father at the end of my trip, he was back at home quietly praying rosaries for my safe journey but never letting on that he was worried.)

The second motel I recall was the one in Boulder, the alleged last night of my trip before heading back to New Mexico.  Although this one was very well-appointed, in a peaceful residential area with lots of trees, it also had its own edginess - emotionally.  I ended up having to stay there for two nights, as an unexpected bout of grief overtook me at the realisation that my "18-days-of-freedom" was coming to an end, that I was going back home to a house full of memories of my husband and our life together, a life I was going to have to disassemble if I was going to move forward.  I couldn’t yet face that, and felt too distraught to drive.  So I called the front desk and reserved an extra night.  Spent the day in the room, busying myself with transcribing my recordings into my laptop, only leaving a few times to walk Shaka around the premises.  Pulled myself together and drove home the next day.   

***

Back to the sofa in Scotland, with Rebus and Hadley – the snoring dogs of my current life - curled around my feet. They haven’t even noticed I was away.

Where had I left off?  I rediscover my place on the page:

“Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. . . .You remember much more than you may think you do, in ways you haven’t considered…” (The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp).

I highly recommend taking any road trip you have always wanted to take.  Mine was eleven years ago and I still count it as one of the best adventures I have ever had.  Thanks to Seal, one not easily forgotten.

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