Red Pine and Maple Trees

My trip started after a period of time I’d spent sleeping on friends couches all across the Midwest, carrying in a bag of dirty laundry over my shoulder and helping to clean out beers from their fridge. After several weeks of this it came time I had to get back to Austin, even if it was to return to work for only one day. The plan was to leave Michigan and fly back to the city in order to pick up my truck and drive it back to Upper Michigan in time for my family reunion. Why not just stay there the whole time? One; because I was saving my vacation days to use at Christmas and, two; because I wanted to load up the truck with my dad’s compost soil to use in my garden in Texas. Yeah they have soil in Texas too but this was the good stuff. 

So after several delays and travel hiccups that didn’t get me back to Austin until after ten p.m. the night before I was to leave, I loaded my truck with guitars, golf clubs, and baskets of dirty clothes to do at my parents house 1,300 miles down the road. Five hours later I was up and out the door on the way to work (a cooler than expected day for late July) and ten hours after that I directed my wheels toward I-35 and the twenty-two hour drive that would take me back the way I’d come just the night before. 

The sky was dark and raining hard as I pulled out of the job site just north of Austin and started on my way. It was a little after four and I-35 stretched out across America long and intimidating when I pressed the ‘Home’ button on my truck’s Maps display. For the next day and a half this would be my place on the road and I would not leave it, from where I began in Texas to where it fell into Lake Superior at Duluth, Minnesota. I-35, straight and rigid like the great spine of America that would take me all the way up through the flatlands and plains of Kansas and the cornfields and rivers and the lakes and finally through the great north woods at the end of Minnesota. I couldn’t wait to get on the road and follow that spine and find the interior of America and feel the winds of the plains and the fatigue of nights spent driving through endless fields. But first was Texas, the state I’d called home all that past year and the vast territory it occupied over the southwest of the country. For the first few hours I made for Dallas and Fort Worth, where the spine split East and West around the metroplex. The rain had been left behind as I sped along through the traffic and I was driving into the cloudless, golden glow of a Texas late afternoon. At the split I headed west for Fort Worth and left the commercialized stretch of fast food and billboards behind and rolled my windows down to miles of cattle fields and sagebrush with the warm breeze blowing against my outstretched hand. Up to this point I’d been relying on Spotify and its suggested songs to get me through the drive but had only been disappointed, until I changed to my own playlist of recently liked songs and played from the top unshuffled. This got me through Fort Worth before I realized I knew this portion of the playlist by heart and could remember where I was when I first heard the song and added it to the playlist and what song came next. Then with a shock I realized I could do this going back several years and that each song and each memory would bring me back farther and farther from moving to Texas, and before moving to school, and closer to the home I now traveled towards, crawling my way across the road from state to state to the place where it all had begun. Okay then, I’ll keep this playlist on the entire way and watch the land change and remember everything that had passed since I lived there. 

When I got through Fort Worth I stopped to fill up on gas for the first time and changed out of my work clothes and boots that were starched with sweat and dirt in favor of shorts and tennis shoes. I wasn’t hungry but used the opportunity to grab one of the containers of food I’d premade in my cooler (chicken, rice, and vegetables) and went in to buy some more sunflower seeds (low sodium). Then I was back on the highway and felt quite happy as the sun burned across the rolling fields and Robert Earl Keen and Stevie Ray Vaughan brought me through the last of Texas. It was sometime after seven and despite a long work day and lack of sleep I’d yet to feel anything but excitement and yearning for the road ahead. About this time a friend called from Kansas City and asked why I planned to stop in Wichita. Don’t waste money on a hotel, he said, Kansas City is only two hours farther and you can crash at my place. Well that puts me on a ten hour drive ending after two in the morning but ah what the hell I can make it. Okay then, Kansas City it is and seven more hours to get there. 

When I crossed the Red River it was higher than when last I’d seen it but still looked to be hardly more than a trickle of slow-moving, sandy pools. A sign welcomed me to Oklahoma, as did the gigantic, grandiose casino, and soon after there were trees again and the red tinted flatland fields that gave Oklahoma its reputation. My mom calls to see how far I’ve made it. She’s worried and tells me to be careful, but I feel I may never be tired again. The sun is getting lower in the sky so the light is beautiful. I’m trying to absorb all of the scenery and speed up a little — I’ve got to make it to Oklahoma City before the sun sets. “I might even wind up in Idaho…” sings Marty Robbins. 

Before long I make it to the Arbuckle Wilderness that rises suddenly out of the plains on either side of I-35. I’ve seen them before but they are just as stunning now with the golden light reflecting off of their red, rocky faces and surrounding flats. I decide I should make a story out of this whole experience and start swerving on the highway trying to take notes on my phone. But what's the difference? There’s no cops and no speed limits and just painted lines on the sides of the asphalt and why not stray over those lines and leave I-35 for a while to see what I can — but no. I’ve got to stay on my highway and make it up through America. 

The Arbuckles don’t last forever and soon I’m back in the red fields as a friend calls me to ask about the drive. I appreciate the company but then the conversation becomes a little distracting and soon I’m annoyed to find the scenery slipping away. Worse yet it’s getting later in the evening and darkness is growing over the red dirt. Even the sun is turned red.

The road continues without a turn as sunset arrives and so does darkness. Suddenly the highway widens to several lanes and here come the overpasses and road signs and in the distance the lights of Oklahoma City. I’d enjoyed my ride through the sunsetting flatlands and thought maybe I’d blow right through Kansas City and make it all the way up the spine tonight. Then I hit hour five and realized I was exactly halfway to where my buddy lived and it was already after nine. Well when you put it like that…

The road climbs up a skyway and curves gently around the city to the west. It’s all lit up and looks cool but I lose interest and am ready to be out of there again and back in the quiet flats. Then it sharpens to a turn that puts the lights behind me and a sign up ahead. Tulsa. Wichita. I turn back North and get a final look; to the left the city lights and gray dusk, to the right a dark, inky blue night. Wichita 325 miles. 

It becomes incessantly bumpy as I approach the last overpass before I get back to the flatland fields I want to watch pass by. Come on moon. Passing through I realize I haven’t reached the end yet and the developed, commercialized infrastructure of highway catering America stretches out illuminated before me. It’s oppressive and a little depressing riding through those billboards and the fast food and ugly concrete that occupies the land lining that stripe through the country. But soon I’m past the last street lamp and back on the quiet highway and the quiet flats beyond and I forget about all that. It’s a cloudy night so no luck with the moon but the oncoming headlights are blinding anyway, so I guess the Great Plains of Kansas and Northern Oklahoma will have to wait for the journey back. Still, it really burned me. 

As I’m leaving Oklahoma City behind and the closer I get to Kansas the more my music leaves Texas and the time I moved there. It’s dark and flat and I’m the only car on the road but still there’s no moon and I think how this is the type of place I’d like to stop at a roadside diner for breakfast and get to talking to people. But now it’s late and my gum is finally losing flavor and I realize that I haven’t yawned once. So looking out in the dark, empty plains I see the windmill lights blinking bright red in synchronized time and it looks just like the oil fields I’d worked in West Texas or Galveston with all of their distant lights and empty, dark space in between, but of course I never really saw those fields in the daylight either. It’s quite the phenomenon of man to witness in Pecos, Texas at four in the morning when you drive out on that solitary highway that leads out into the fields — Death Highway they call it — with all of the other three-quarter ton trucks flying past the distant lights and oil flare towers and everyone is passing and breaking a hundred miles an hour and when you get to your site its still an hour before sunrise and when it rises all you see is desert anyway and your somewhere in New Mexico. Then you work until after the sun sets and you’re back in the dark flying down that highway so you never really see the fields just the lights. Just then I have to laugh because Charley Crockett comes on singing Odessa and “the lights out in those fields” and I’m shocked to see I still haven’t cleared the topmost part of Texas! I’m an hour or more from Kansas as I think maybe these aren’t oil fields at all but rather the dark, black pools that stretch out under the highways in the bays of Corpus Cristi and it feels like I could fall right over the edge into those placid waters and be swallowed up. But I never leave my spiny bridge and daylight will reveal what everyone knows them to be, just the endless fields of grass making up the Great Plains in Oklahoma. 

After ten my voice is starting to get raspy and I can hit all the low notes in the Johnny Cash songs. I still haven’t reached Kansas and two mindless hours pass before I cross over and make it to Wichita. I’m a little earlier than expected but the highway curves and I pass by the city without a glimpse. I’m still the only car on the road accompanied by a strange, little, red moon that has emerged from behind the clouds, so vivid that I can see all the contours on its surface. It’s not long before I lose it behind the clouds again and Wichita is far behind me. 

After midnight I realized I could actually see out into the plains when not blocked by the window glass, so I rolled them all down and rode with my hand waving in the wind and smelled the sweet grass and listened to the cicadas. The moon must’ve been brighter and high behind the clouds because the sky was light enough to make out the silhouettes from where they broke up. Just then ZZ Top came on with ‘Tush’ and I felt like a regular badass. Riding through the plains lasted hours and felt like everything I hoped the trip through the middle of America would be. There were descriptions I’d read in old cowboy books of them being endless seas of grass without landmarks and easy to get lost in and it was exhilarating to stare into the vast expanse so calm and still and to know they still exist in some form. It burned me even more not to be seeing them in daylight.

As I got nearer to Topeka I had considerably more bugs on my windshield and was starting to get worried about finding a gas station. I’d gone for miles without seeing one, and it never occurred to me that some of the pumps might be closed when I rolled into town after one in the morning. I wasted several miles on fruitless attempts down empty streets and cursed at myself for not stopping earlier when I’d had the chance. When I finally did fill up (just about the entirety of the thirty-six gallon tank) I was just half an hour from my friend's house in Lawrence. There I was welcomed at two with a beer and a place to sleep on the couch, both of which I accepted gladly. I took the opportunity to shower and finally wash off the sweat and dirt I’d accumulated at work three states prior and found my place on the couch before staring wide awake at the ceiling. I laughed thinking of the two beer fridges apparently necessary in my buddy’s little living room before sleep finally took me. 

I hadn’t yawned or used the restroom once the entire drive. 

It’s hardly four hours gone by that my eyes open alert as if I’d never closed them and soon after that I’m back in my truck on the road. Now it’s Kansas City ahead, rising out of the morning haze and I’m crossing the river into Missouri. My playlist has surpassed the one year mark and suddenly I’m back in Korea, then Europe; climbing off flights onto the tarmac, riding with my face pressed against the window glass of long train rides. Des Moines 45 miles, but that can’t be right? It’s not. 

Riding through the Missouri, the vegetation looks just how I imagined a river valley would. The trees were taller and greener, they didn’t have the gnarled, twisted look of the plains trees with their light, brittle leaves. Rather they grew thick trunks with boughs drooping heavily under all the moisture and fat leaves. Then it’s up out of the valley again and the trees shrink and gnarl to the same as the plains on the other side and I’m halfway through America. 

Now it’s Jim Croce and the Revivalists and I’m back-tracking through Prague and Germany. At a mountain lake in Switzerland I’m sharing a bottle of wine with some friends I’d made from Montreal and America. Of course there’s a girl there and I have a crush. She taught me how to hand roll cigarettes and we smoked them all that night until it was so late it was early and the first signs of light grew in the sky. Then morning came and I left for the mountains and she went her way and that was the end of that. 

Slowly the plains change and I see my first cornfield with its yellow tops dotted against an endless blue sky. On a bumpy stretch of road I pass the first (and only) cop car of the trip and he stays right on my tail for several miles so that I’m sure he’s running my plates. At last he takes an exit off and I accelerate away up the spine. 

Bob Dylan plays and I’m surrounded by corn half an hour from the Iowa border. I remember back to Texas just the day before and thought how this was the best thing I’ve ever done. Then the Beatles come on and I’m signing the studio wall outside Abbey Road and ten minutes from Iowa I yawn for the first time. 

When I first crossed into Iowa, instantly the road became lined with trees to one side and wildflowers to the other and I thought maybe all I’d heard about Iowa was some mischievous lie. The road curved down a valley and still there were trees — strange trees growing without any leaves, then big luscious trees and evergreens. 

Then the corn came lining endlessly along the road, neatly rowed in deep, mesmerizing patterns. Corn on one side with soy mixed in on the other and I’m north of Des Moines on the way to Aimes. I still hadn’t had any coffee after noon and I allowed myself to be amazed at finding myself in Iowa. I wondered what my family must think about all this, then decided it was simple really, just stay driving. The Eagles, Luke Combs, Bob Dylan again and I’m back at school, but really I’m an hour from the Minnesota border. 

At the fifth hour of the day and fifteenth of the trip I cross into Minnesota and the lake I pass is the first body of water I’d seen since the Missouri. Now the trees are coming back too and everything is starting to look familiar. In Austin, Minnesota I pass a job site I’d worked at during my internship two years before, then another one thirty miles after that. I know this stretch of I-35 and it’s a straight shot into the twin cities. Pink Floyd and Tyler Childers bring me through my senior year, and when Paul McCartney plays I’m standing on an airplane in Seattle so I know I’m close to being two years back in the playlist. As I climb up the spine and see the city rising before me I have to laugh and almost cry because the Black Crowes play and by some happy accident the music has timed to line up to exactly when I’d lived there. “God it’s so painful, something that’s so close is still so far out of reach,” says Tom Petty. 

In Minneapolis I have to wait to pick up my sister from the airport but I’m early and have several hours to kill. Okay. So I get an oil change and a car wash and do stretches in the lobby. By this point I’m nearing twenty-four hours on the road and everything about my body feels swollen. So I do lunges and high knees and rub my puffy eyes while ignoring the looks from other people in the room. There’s still at least six hours left to go and my sister’s plane is delayed so we won’t make it in until after midnight. 

Eventually I pick up my sister and we’re back on the spine, the last stretch of I-35 that will take us all the way to the big lake. Steely Dan, Marcus King. The afternoon sun looks beautiful and having some conversation in the car is a welcomed change. We’re lucky with traffic and are making good time and there’s nothing left until Duluth so no need to check the Maps. Morgan Wallen. After a couple hours the sun is getting really low and I get a sinking feeling because the ride is almost over. You would think that I would be exhausted and sick of the car and the road and everything else but really I wasn’t. There’s something captivating about flying down the road, the tires humming and painted lines blurring past. Maybe it’s watching all of America roll out before you from behind a windshield that’s so addicting, with each exit or curve hiding a new sight and town. Whatever it was brought a bittersweet feeling when I came down the end of I-35 and looked down at Duluth golden in the evening sun and surrounded by endless blue water. I had reached the top of America’s spine from central Texas where I’d begun and had yawned only three times (all of them that morning). 

Crossing the bridge into Superior, Wisconsin we were welcomed by the sunlit Main Street of a north woods downtown and felt quite at home in its distinctly unique character. John Lennon. From there it was just a few more hours to get to a little town surrounded by low mountains to one side and a Great Lake to the other over a gray dusk journey that would end in a starlit midnight. Jackson Browne, Stevie Ray Vaughan again. We pulled out of Superior and almost immediately were in the tall red pine and maple trees that would guide us the rest of the road home. I kept my Maps on to watch our progress but really didn’t need to; I’d been here before. I already knew these roads and these trees and maybe even the smell in the air and I couldn’t possibly make a wrong turn if I tried and even if I did what’s the difference? There was no wrong turn here and every little north woods town or harbor town or mining town was just the same as the last and every bit as home to me as anywhere else in that place. So I knew that as Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Boston played as they always did when I was in that part of the world that I would find my way back this time as I always had in the past, and as I would again next time and every time thereafter,  again and again and again.