This is of no small significance. There was a time when entertaining such a thought would have been nothing less than blasphemy. So long I've dreamt of making this highway run (thank you, Bruce...), for almost 30 years now it has been a part of how I saw - or wanted to see - myself, where I wanted to see myself. And for all that time, in whatever capacity it was regarded (either methodically planned, or maniacally fantasized about, with all the glittery details sprawled across the landscape of my mind), it has remained an exclusively summertime odyssey, if for no other reason than I have always despised winter.
But to my surprise (and against all odds), I've warmed up to the coldest season as time's passed, even just since I started this blog nearly two years ago. Make no mistake, I'm still sick of the sickness and cold, the early evenings, long nights and late dawns, the uneasy patter across icy sidewalks in temperatures so cold skin can freeze instantly, praying to remain on your feet, to not give the guy watching you through the window of the Starbucks something to laugh uproariously at. There remains to this day nothing I wouldn't prefer to do in summer rather than winter (including skiing, sledding and building snow forts), and I still plan (hope) to live out my golden years somewhere warm, because winter is no place to be old.
But to my surprise (and against all odds), I've warmed up to the coldest season as time's passed, even just since I started this blog nearly two years ago. Make no mistake, I'm still sick of the sickness and cold, the early evenings, long nights and late dawns, the uneasy patter across icy sidewalks in temperatures so cold skin can freeze instantly, praying to remain on your feet, to not give the guy watching you through the window of the Starbucks something to laugh uproariously at. There remains to this day nothing I wouldn't prefer to do in summer rather than winter (including skiing, sledding and building snow forts), and I still plan (hope) to live out my golden years somewhere warm, because winter is no place to be old.
But I'm not old...yet. I can still hack it, and winter, even last year's horrendous 'polar vortex' variety, doesn't frustrate me - or depress me - the way it used to. News of a weather advisory or storm warning doesn't fill me with a knee-jerk anxiety like it once did. Cold spells and dark winter nights no longer afflict me with cabin fever. And when it's been snowing all night, and I awaken to find I must plod Frankenstein-like through knee-high snowdrifts to my car, when the brittle ice scraper snaps in half as I'm impatiently chiseling just enough of a porthole through the ice on my windshield to drive, when the best way to dig my vehicle out is to come in from above, I'm not angry or offended like I might have been in earlier times. There was a time I actually took winter personally. No longer.
For reasons unknown, winter, which in my neck of the woods can decide to stick around throughout April and into May, has taken its rightful place as a time for reflection and contemplation. And so, for the first time in my life, I can admit there might be some unique advantages to taking a road trip in the off-season.
1/48/60?
For reasons unknown, winter, which in my neck of the woods can decide to stick around throughout April and into May, has taken its rightful place as a time for reflection and contemplation. And so, for the first time in my life, I can admit there might be some unique advantages to taking a road trip in the off-season.
Doubtless there would be mostly hassles and headaches. Weather would a factor, especially in northern climates. There might be times, numerous if bad luck followed me, when I'd run into a blizzard that actually impeded my travel for an extended period, and that lack of progress would surely get in the way of any travel rhythm I was trying to achieve. Even on clear sunny winter days, icy conditions can be hazardous, and any time spent outside would be, at the very least, uncomfortable. That would really be a drag; I'm a walker. Come to think of it, cold weather would get in the way of my plan to take an RV...might snuff it out all together.
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| DRIVING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND - When I think road trip, when anyone thinks road trip, scenes like this (a snowy Saturday morning in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin) don't generally come to mind. But what might it feel like, how might it read, to travel long distances through winter? |
But logistics aside, speaking purely in psychological/emotional terms, I wonder how being a drifter - being nebulous - from, say, October through April, might read differently than doing what I've been planning to do since I was thirteen: drive cross country from May to October.
I imagine the weightlessness of travel through the holiday season would be especially lonely. The holidays are when most of us strive to feel connected, to reaffirm the social nature of our species, the bonds that give our lives meaning. But at the same time it could be strangely invigorating to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve in a completely random town among strangers, then drive on facing a string of winter (as opposed to summer) events and holidays punctuating the days - the NFL playoffs, Martin Luther King Day, the Superbowl, Groundhog's Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter...
These are all different holidays, of course, with different purposes and degrees of observation, to be sure (lest any reader think I'm blithely lumping MLK Day in with Groundhog's Day...), but as mile markers stringing segments of time (and distance) together, they comprise a 'winter collective' that would surely inform any extended road trip quite differently than its summer cousin.
Not to mention, people act different in winter than in summer, for a variety of reasons. The simple matter of the weather being fouler in most areas of the country can't help but change how people behave (blistering heat has a similar effect in the summer). Most people have less money in winter, their financial house recently blown out by the holidays, and right around the joys of tax time, to boot. They're more likely to get sick in the winter, and stay sick for longer periods of time. Kids tend to be cooped up inside in the winter months, annoying each other and fraying the last nerve of their parents. All of this almost certainly contributes to a change in attitudes and relations among society as a whole that might only be measurable by someone who is nebulous.
The landscape would also look much different in winter than it would in summer, and I know that would drastically change the experience. In fact, that's perhaps the most significant way I've embraced winter recently: I used to find the winter day gloomy and muddy and depressing at best. Now, it possesses a brooding beauty that for the first time I take notice of, rather than resent.
I guess the only way to measure differences accurately would be to do both trips...one in the summer, one in the winter. Ideally it would be the same trip, exact same route, just in two different seasons. And honestly, the more I think about that, the more I like the idea.
For now, however, I'm going to stay focused on 1/48/50, the exclusively summertime odyssey. But another time? Definitely. Same route, different season...I can see it now.
These are all different holidays, of course, with different purposes and degrees of observation, to be sure (lest any reader think I'm blithely lumping MLK Day in with Groundhog's Day...), but as mile markers stringing segments of time (and distance) together, they comprise a 'winter collective' that would surely inform any extended road trip quite differently than its summer cousin.
Not to mention, people act different in winter than in summer, for a variety of reasons. The simple matter of the weather being fouler in most areas of the country can't help but change how people behave (blistering heat has a similar effect in the summer). Most people have less money in winter, their financial house recently blown out by the holidays, and right around the joys of tax time, to boot. They're more likely to get sick in the winter, and stay sick for longer periods of time. Kids tend to be cooped up inside in the winter months, annoying each other and fraying the last nerve of their parents. All of this almost certainly contributes to a change in attitudes and relations among society as a whole that might only be measurable by someone who is nebulous.
The landscape would also look much different in winter than it would in summer, and I know that would drastically change the experience. In fact, that's perhaps the most significant way I've embraced winter recently: I used to find the winter day gloomy and muddy and depressing at best. Now, it possesses a brooding beauty that for the first time I take notice of, rather than resent.
I guess the only way to measure differences accurately would be to do both trips...one in the summer, one in the winter. Ideally it would be the same trip, exact same route, just in two different seasons. And honestly, the more I think about that, the more I like the idea.
For now, however, I'm going to stay focused on 1/48/50, the exclusively summertime odyssey. But another time? Definitely. Same route, different season...I can see it now.
1/48/60?
