When I’m particularly caught in immediate everyday upsets, I get itchy for the open road. I’m stuck, isolated, by my suburb’s lack of sidewalks and perimeter of highways. Going for a drive to nowhere is a cliché coping mechanism, I know, but I am only a product of my circumstance. Staying here feels nauseating. Somewhere else feels unattainable. I am nothing but tension. I want to go nowhere. My go-to route has become a ritual that my 2018 hatchback and I have traced countless times.
It begins with a race to get out from behind all the houses and trees that block the sky. I finally start to feel free at the first turn onto the boulevard. At the top of the hill, as I watch for an opening in the traffic, the stripmall sprawl spills out below. I have a front row seat to the sunset, a soft tangerine, illuminating the concrete, with pin-pricks of red and green from far off traffic signals below.
The air, like me, has been stewing all day, trapped just above the asphalt. I roll my windows down, finding release in driving through the curtain of hot humid summer air, creating wind with the hood of my car, cutting it in half with the breeze. Willing the weather to change is futile. But at least by moving through, I can play at having a say in the temperature.
I’m pressing down on the accelerator with force that is the opposite of gentle. Fuel goes into the engine, where it’s compressed and burned to move pistons that in turn make the axles spin tires faster and faster. The harder I press, for each gallon burned, each rotation, the pressure in my chest eases at a matched rate. My feelings of relief climb with the speedometer.
Down this first stretch I’ll define the mood for the night with music. As a serial song repeater, some tune will encapsulate my mood just right and I’ll want to stay in it’s stasis for as long as possible, letting beats and melody reaffirm whatever ache I’m meant to be driving off. But I know that too much cheapens every good thing. So I intersperse other music, leaning towards swooping notes that stretch out over the highway. When that song of the night does pop up in the shuffle, it’s a joyous return.
At the crossroads, I skip the first turn onto the beltway, because that way is for going somewhere. Instead, I head toward the gentle curves of the parkway. I catch the final moments of the city monuments glowing post sunset, their sure silhouettes reflecting in the river. I pass the bike path, the train tracks, and the airport; Planes take off, metro cars clank, boats glide along, pedestrians, the other cars; Everyone is going. If not somewhere then to nowhere but going all the same.
And, of course, all this transition, it’s beautiful. I’m a license plate in the fleet of brake lights. Maybe if I feel small enough for long enough, everything else will feel small too. I keep driving-
Still on the parkway but now into the woods. There are no stoplights, no streetlights. It’s dark now, and the trees are a welcome tunnel to nowhere. The street here is made of different things: asphalt, concrete, cobble. Each section cracks differently, too. I’m bouncing along this ground that I believe is near untouched by direct human contact. And I think about how it would feel to run my fingers across the surface, like skimming the water off the edge of a boat, reaching down to the hard rock, at 50, 60, 70 miles per hour, however fast I can get away with, however fast I need. It would shave my nails and skin down to bone. Past bone, I’d probably leak marrow.
Right at the end of this side of the parkway, there’s a roundabout in front of an old, old house. An estate, now a tourist attraction. While it does branch into other directions, I ignore them in favor of turning back on my route, retracing this section again. To marvel at the trees, the main street, the river, the trains, the airport, the monuments. I could fully reverse my route and return home; however, stopping means that whatever feeling I’m out running will catch up and I’m having too much fun.
The best part of the parkway’s narrow two lanes is that there’s no room for cops. I speed strategically toward the state line without worry.
At the state line I get to the true end of the parkway. It simply stops and I must follow the safety arc onto the beltway that I so carefully avoided before. But if I’ve timed it right, it’s late now, and the traffic is low. Everyone else has gotten to their somewhere, leaving more room for me to take my time to nowhere. I take the beltway back to the exit for the other side of the boulevard.
Again, I could turn back, head home, close the loop. And sometimes I do, satisfied with the hour and a half or so of gasoline I’ve burned thus far.
But like my songs, I want to stay caught in the feeling. Suspended in passage, in travel. In the car, I have not yet arrived. Nothing is decided, nothing is permanent. No conclusions, I’m still on the way.
The next leg of my route is into suburbs I don’t know by heart. The already infrequent strip malls fall away until, eventually, it’s just the battlefields.
It’s midnight, far from the river and the city. It’s dark, dark out here. The hills are rolling. The stars are bright. Save for a few fences, there’s not one thing around. The battle centuries over. These are just fields.
For the first time in the whole drive, I am really actually alone.
This is where I indulge myself. I put on that song of the night. Settle into the bad icky stuck that got me in the car in the first place. And, if I can, cry.
This whole trip is a practice in self-deception. Speed past the hurt, try to convince myself I’m small, but in the end nothing feels fixed until I’m out here.
Finally, all this way, out in my nowhere, there’s enough open space to help hold all that was weighing me down. I spread the tension across my drive like ashes.
I drive slow but never stop in the battlefields. Staying nowhere means never being somewhere again. And I know I have to make it through. I know at some point I have to close the loop.
About the author:
Hazel Feldstein is a third year sociology major at Oberlin College. She is also studying journalism and creative writing. Hazel’s favorite meal was a pickle from Busch Garden in the 5th grade.
