The Road

My relationship with the road has evolved over years, just like any relationship does – it transforms to become the vague remembrance of what it used to be, despite our helpless and awkward denials and trying to fight it. I think it started before I was alive, all those many years ago, with my gypsy ancestors whose very home was the road …

For me, it started out back in the days of my school years and later, through college, learning the road and loving it in the only way you can learn it and love it – by walking it. I used to walk miles and miles, either with a purpose (to school, to my relatives in the mountains, from the train station towards their remote abodes), or without – just to get to a park, where I would walk some more …

Then, I started taking transportation (train and bus mainly) to get to other cities and countries. All this time, no matter what the means of transport was,  I noted the sights my eyes saw, the color of the sky, mostly, and the shape of the roads – winding, or straight, climbing or flat, potholes or just pristinely even …

Once I moved to America, the road was mine, ‘cause I could drive just about everywhere. That was after years and building up courage to test the interstate system. I would sometimes pick a spot in remote places with skinny, tiny roads that lead to it, just to see if I could make it. That could take up a lonely girl’s whole weekend.

Through it all, I kept a picture of the perfect trip in my head. Although I had never seen it, to me, the perfect trip would be somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico, in the desert, where the road looks endless and it touches the sky at all times. And where there is nothing, not a soul around, not a vague and lying promise of a settling in sight!

Today, I have the chance to drive the desert of Utah every day, if I chose to! It’s not Arizona or New Mexico, but it’s close. Today, my dream has come true, I could say.

I took these shots on my recent trip to Vegas, while driving. I hope you get a taste of the lonely, and yet very alive feeling you get by chasing that horizon, right here, in the desert. 

I love, love, love this beautiful big sky!

 

The colors of the desert against the sky are surprising and breathtaking ...

 

Sunrise in the desert ...

 

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road 

 

Sunset on the road ... 

 

Away ...

 

And till recently, I never knew what my road song was: it was this beautiful reading from Arizona Dream. When I first heard it, while driving, of course, it felt just like coming home. When I get sad or lonely, I play it over and over in my head, and it makes me smile with possibilities …