On The Road.

Chicago.

Since Sharon's using her Spring Break to visit her folks back in Downingtown, I took the opportunity to drive down to Chicago while I had the available daylight. With a bunch of storms moving through, the day was flat and gray. Not ideal driving weather, but far better than two and a half hours of glaring headlights. With warm days of late, the snow's melted away to reveal the earth ready to awaken from winter. Farmers' fields, mostly contours of cornstalk stubs, and pockets of woods slowly give way to suburbs and office parks as the highway slides closer to Chicago, at roughly the same rate that traffic increases. By the time you can't afford to take your eyes off the road, there isn't much worth looking at anymore.

Not that the Interstate system lends itself to scenic drives - certainly not if you're behind the wheel - but I've come to like the gentle hills and farmland of southern Wisconsin. Illinois, being essentially flat, seems so much less interesting, not much different than the haul across Indiana. I've heard horror stories about Kansas, describing it as like eight or more hours of brain death. These weren't Kansans telling me this, of course, so I'm sure there's a little inherent bias. Can't say I'm anxious to find out for myself, though.

Living in southern Wisconsin, and working in an architectural field, in Chicago, I end up hearing mention of Frank Lloyd Wright from time to time. I'd imagine he's probably the most recognized architect, at least in this country, but his architectural designs are the second thing that occurs to me on hearing his name. What really fascinates me about him is his annual cross-country drives from Taliesin, in southern Wisconsin, to Taliesin West, in southern Arizona. I'm sure that this was a typical sort of activity for the well-to-do, back before the automobile was an American crutch, but Wright's the only one I know any details of.

Even today, with multi-lane superhighways, with speed limits of 65 mph and up, it's a hell of a long drive. Must've taken him days, weaving through the small towns, struggling over the Rockies, moving at, what? 35 mph, maybe? Something that seems interminably slow to us, I'm sure. The scenery must have been phenomenal, though, as the world shifted from northern Midwest autumn to the semi-arid winter of the Southwest. An experience not unlike what Robert Pirsig describes in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, winding along the back roads of the Dakotas and Montana on a motorcycle. Watching the red-winged blackbirds. Feeling so insignificant, so happily lost beneath the Big Sky.

Bill Bryson did something like that road trip, which he describes in his book, The Lost Continent. It's an altogether different experience for him, I think. It's a trip on the back roads of America, to the El Dorado that is small-town America. Of course, he approaches it from a much different tack than the other writers of the road experience. Pirsig uses it as a serious philosophical exploration. Kerouac and the beat generation - and their ideals and experiences - have long passed. The old roads of Wright's era are broken and buried under the expansion of the Interstate system. For Bryson, using it as a chance to mourn his father's death, to reconnect with the cross-country travels of his childhood, it's something else entirely. His curious humor and cynicism make it yet another unique take on the American road.

Would any of these mirror my experiences, if I ever had the time, the opportunity to undertake the same sort of thing myself? I doubt it. For now, I really only experience the road as a void between destinations. Granted, the Madison-to-Downingtown drive is long enough that I'd just as soon not drag it out any longer than necessary. Twelve or thirteen hours, with just the minimum of stops for gas, food and toilets. Usually with a limited window, such as the last few vacation days from work, so I'd rather have quality time with family than with the land in between us. I wonder what I'm missing.

There was a time, in college, when Sharon and I drove from Downingtown to the Catskills for a long weekend. Rather than take the highways through New Jersey, around New York City, we opted to take smaller highways through the Poconos, drifting along the Appalachians. We took every excuse to pull over for scenic views, to see the waterfalls tumbling down the mountains, to enjoy driving at slow speeds with windows down. They're purely good memories, spending the bulk of a day enjoying the travel, postponing the destination. I imagine a grand road trip to be like that day, drawn out over weeks and all sorts of places.

It's the road trip I'll likely never take, but I think I'm okay with that.