Three Tales From the Road

By Jeffry L’H. Tank

Introduction

As you read the essay “Every Road Has a Soul” please try to keep in mind that I firmly believe that for each rider the road has its own story to relate. My story may not be your story and that’s only as it should be. As such, there is no right or wrong, no story or view which is better or more correct than any other, each is a very personal perception and I hope you will read this essay with that in mind. The other thing I’d mention here before beginning is that over the years of riding I’ve noticed that the character of any road changes with the seasons and even the time of day. A midnight run down an empty superhighway is completely different than a run down the same road at noon when it is packed with vehicles, which is the time of day referred to in the first section.

Because I feel the character of the superhighway, as with any road, changes with the coming of night, I decided it would be only fair to show another side of riding the highway by including a poem at the end of the essay called “Moon-lit Images at Midnight”. Unlike the drone of daylight hours on the superhighway, this is a tale about those half hidden images, sensed more than seen, that hide at the edges of the road when the world is deep in it’s midnights slumber. The third selection, tentatively entitled “I Remember”, is yet another story from the road, this time whispered to me by an abandoned house on a recent ride along state route 50 in West Virginia’s mining country. But perhaps I should simply begin and let the tales and images speak for themselves.

Every Road Has a Soul

Every road has soul and every byway a song to sing. Every section of pavement has a story and every path laid down in concrete, asphalt or stone speaks in the language of the road, a language comprised of spinning tires, road salt, gravel and blacktop. Every mile is an episode in the life of the road, every seam and repair a chapter in its life’s history waiting to be read by those who care to know. It’s a story of a beginning and an end, a middle and an edge, the way things were and what may yet be. It takes time to learn to read the language of the road and it requires a passion to know and understand what is written in those lines and markings. A desire to look beyond the surface of not only the road but of what lies to either side, to delve into the essence of the place, the time, the ride. For each rider the stories are unique, attuned to that particular riders’ view and how they interpret the runes of the road and this is exactly as it should be and therein gives each of us our own private place on the road.

While all roads have their own history to relate, for me they come down to two basic story lines, one depressing and foreboding the other uplifting and refreshing.

The modern highway speaks to me of giant machines moving millions of tons of earth, of deep scars upon the landscape, of monsters with cavernous maws swallowing copious quantities of raw materials to lay down countless miles of concrete surface. It speaks of the need to get from here to there at an ever faster pace, a need to be somewhere, anywhere but Here, as if it being anywhere else other than the point of departure will, somehow, be better. An endless, breathless rushing forward to escape the here and now, to reach the other end only to forget why the trip began in the first place and be left with the realization that’s it’s no better at the “new” here than it was at the old.

The debris of retread truck tires lining the roadside tells of the quest to provide the means to transport ever increasing quantities of goods. Goods to fill huge malls and the ever burgeoning stores with products meant to tear yet another dollar from the consumer simply to fill pockets of those who already have more than can be reasonably spent in an entire lifetime. Can having the choice of twenty different brands of peas be worth the cost of a landscape so scared that the damage done will far outlive the concrete surface that replaced it? I find the super-slab flat and impersonal, half dead before it is even finished. Lacking any character, it lulls me to sleep and removes me from the essence of riding. It definitely doesn’t tell my kind of story and its soul is buried so deep in concrete and gravel I can barely sense its presence.

The song of the superhighway is nothing more than a tuneless mono-tone drone, an uninspired Devils’ work to kill the soul and deaden the mind of the unlucky traveler caught in its clutches in a head-long rush to nowhere. It scares me, it sucks the life from my bones and pulls at me in a desperate attempt to smash me against the concrete. It robs me of any memory of having seen what flashes by, encouraging me to travel ever faster, and in so doing, see less, know less, feel less and lose my self-sense in its devils drone.

Now, on the other hand, a back road or twisting two lane byway tells me a completely different tale. It is a tale of a gentler time, a less frantic pace and a place worth being. It speaks of the sweat of countless workers with simple axes and picks and shovels and years of labor cutting and digging and tunneling through the earth. Of removing just enough rock and earth to lay the road wide enough to serve its purpose without leveling everything in sight in the name of Progress. It’s a story of the need to push forward the frontier without loosing sight of the reason to travel in the first place. Of a time when stopping and surveying the land made sense and reconnected you to the whole, and it still does, if you just stop and look. It speaks of the farmers’ need to take their crops to market in a timely fashion, but not at the expense of his neighbors’ house and fields, and of the passage of families on their way to Sunday gatherings and barn raisings. Stories that endue me with a sensation of serenity and peace, of knowing the difference between going and arriving, between having been and having yet to be. More than that, it is a part of an even greater story composed of all the elements that line the road’s passage; each structure, each tree or bush or blade of grass, each vista that appears along the route, has its own tale to relate to those that stop and listen. It is integral to the whole, not something removed from it.

The road song that those byways sing is one of soft, melodious notes, a tune created by the ever changing textures of the road surface and sung by a choir of asphalt and tire. It reawakens my soul instead of killing it, (because I’ve learned to listen). Its song is its soul and it lies close to the surface, not buried deep within, so close you can touch it, sense it and smell it in every foot, every mile of pavement. It is almost (but not quite) overpowering, it pulls you down the road, yet leaves you in command of the ride, excites the mind and body, urges you to explore just one more mile, round one more corner, with promises of rewards unbounded, but never false. It connects without controlling, urges without compelling and takes you to places where you know you belong.

For me the back roads are a place where the Going is more important than the Arriving and following the contours of the land make more sense than following a flat line to oblivion. A place where nature can be recognized as the blessing it is, something to be worshiped and savored, a place where a man’s need to Ramble is more important than his desire to Arrive. Where each curve, each hilltop and valley brings forth a new smell, a new view and a new sensation to be savored to the fullest. A place where each stretch of road provides the opportunity to catch a glimpse of some small creature hiding in the greensward by the side of the road, or a creature of the air alight on a branch overhanging the road. A place where stopping often is not an option; it’s a requirement because you’ll miss so much if you don’t. Where it’s not about the capability to run a thousand miles a day, it’s about the desire to run just One More.

Is it any wonder then that I prefer the back roads?

Moon-lit Images at Midnight

Moonbeam melodies of asphalt and tyres;
A midnight chorus of road moments in rhyme.
Tracing lines beneath a waxing, gibbous moon.

Traveling a lunule-lit highway
past diamond studded streams beds, rain fed and swollen.
Reflections of sky spots trapped in a rippled mirror.

Leathery night-fliers surfing the sky currents
dart among dark branches, driven by empty bellies.
Bat-winged silhouettes sliding across the star-field.

Bright-eyed buildings stare into the night.
Man built boxes of laughter, heartache and love,
resting contentedly in lunar-light meadows and fields.

Forlorn chimney-towers of crumbling brick,
flanked by tumble-down timbers and naked window frames.
Transformed by time from hearth to sparrow house.

Vertical rock walls sliced by ribbons of blacktop roadways
Wet-black sandwiches of stone, sensed more than seen.
Half-lit passageways connecting the moon-shadow valleys.

A piston-propelled machine and a rider chasing a circle of light.
Dusk to dawn then back again in a circumlinear* progression.
Tracing lines beneath a waxing, gibbous moon.

*Since Life is viewed as cyclic (the Life Cycle) and time is considered to be linear, one could view our progression though life as “circumlinear” :)

I Remember

Nestled quietly on an overgrown hillside
I am filled with memories.
Much more than a mere shell
I exist as a living testimony to the past.

I remember the Father
with the face of a miner.
Darkened by the years
of digging deep within the black bowels of the earth.

I remember the Mother
with the hands of a giver.
Wrinkled by the years
of cleaning and mending and tending the garden.

I remember the Children
with the eyes of youth.
Bright with the wonder
of a world filled with simple mountain treasures.

I remember the green fields
planted with summer hay.
The soft fragrances
of herbs and the bountiful garden that fed my family.

I remember the Laughter
and the family gatherings on my front porch.
Sunday readings from the book
of revelations, praising the glory of the Maker’s creations.

I remember the joy of new arrivals,
and the sadness of departures.
A familiar acceptance
of that which simply is and can not be changed by woman or man.

Where are my children now?
They are grown and departed.
They have built new houses
of love and filled them with the joy they once knew within my walls.

Where are my Father and Mother?
they now rest in the field.
Risen from the ashes
and returned to the earth, where I too must follow, my purpose fulfilled.

Nestled quietly on an overgrown hillside
I am filled with memories.
Much more than a mere shell
I exist as a living testimony to the past.
And I Remember.

© Jeffry L’H. Tank

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