For the last 20 years our family has chosen to live in places that are hard to get out of. We have ended up far from the interstate, accessible only by circuitous routes over secondary, rural, winding roads. While we didn't do it on purpose, I think that says something about our preferences, our habits of life.
When we lived in Lancaster, PA we could go south easily, but our destination was most often northeast, and that required two hours of small town main streets, tobacco fields and roadside vegetable stands before we reached the interstate. We made that trip dozens of times - seldom traversing the exact same route. We always, it seems, spent half the trip wondering if we were on the right road, looking for vaguely remembered landmarks, trying to decide if things looked familiar. In those pre-Mapquest days we studied oddly unhelpful maps that gave us a rough idea of which towns we needed to hit, but always seemed to leave off route numbers, or mark the same thin, black line with two different numbers. It was impossible to estimate how long the trip would take since the first, or last 80 miles never looked the same and some small town was always doing road maintenance.
Northern New Hampshire is the same story. Straight north or south is no problem, but traveling west (usually our destination of choice) requires 2-3 hours meandering through small- town VT, over mountains, past ski resorts, through tiny college towns with their landmark pizza joints ("I remember we ate there once. Which trip was that? Well, this must be right. . . .") war memorials and tourist shops. Once we cross into NY we are guided by the trail of Stewart's convenience stores which we have also frequented on many late night trips. My sister's family from Iowa, flatlanders that they are, claim they have never made the trip to our house without someone throwing up on the snaky roads in VT.
So, today's trip to Chicago to deliver our first daughter to college began with a wandering three hour tour through the lovely Green Mountains of Vermont, just now at the height of their greenery. In a week or two things will begin to wither, drop-off, change to a new palette of reds and oranges. But today the hills are lush and green.
The names here are as rich as the views - we could have taken any number of roads less traveled -Hells Peak Road, Burnt Meadow Road, Muddy Lane and Bank Run Road. Within a single mile we passed businesses named Equinox, Ekwanok and Akwanok. We did not take Squashville Road or Nine Mill Tree Road, but we crossed over Meander Reservoir and felt drawn by the mystery of signs to Lake Desolation.
We stopped twice to study faded state maps posted on Tourist Information boards, hard to decipher under cloudy plexiglass. We passed Stonehedge (a misspelled allusion or a play on words???) and signs for Missy's American Fried Chicken which saucily proclaimed, "This chick has all the pieces." We stopped at Bills' Bait Shop for directions, and were guided to a road under construction through a heavily wooded area. But eventually we found Interstate 90 and began the serious work of driving cross-country, which would lead to the serious work of saying goodbye.
It seemed strange to make a long road trip with only one passenger in the back seat. Nearly every other time we have taken to the Interstate for long trips we have had anywhere from three to seven kids packed in the back of the van, ususally coexisting with mounds of luggage and snacks and books and travel games. Today there was only A reading and dozing in the back seat she had all to herself. Even though she was taking everything she expected to need for a year in the dorm, there was plenty of room for extra luggage in the back, nothing fell out when we opened the doors at rest stops. It felt lonely and very, very quiet.
After a day and a half on the road we arrived at the college during a storm of Biblical proportions. The last three miles we could barely see the road in front of us. The last 10 minutes we pulled over repeatedly for emergency vehicles, their lights flashing dimly through the driving rain. Several roads near the college were closed for fallen trees while houses and businesses stood dark in the late afternoon gloom, their power out for the first of three days. We later learned that a tornado had skipped through the town minutes before we arrived - was this an inauspicious day for the class of 2011 to begin their career? Could it be used as an excuse to take my eldest back home - to keep her a little longer?
But there is no home to take her back to these days, at least not in the contiguous states. She had packed two of her three enormous suitcases in Malaysia before heading to Thailand for three weeks. We had all stopped briefly in New England, staying with friends before this trip across the incomparable US landscape; we, with our diminished family, would be boarding a plane for the other side of the world in six days, and she didn't have a ticket for that flight. She had to stay here, natural disasters nothwithstanding.
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