Drive South
Winter where I live is different for everyone. Some people disappear; I don't see them for months. Others reach out. We meet at the gym and challenge each other to do planks. We skate on a frozen lake. We go to events. Some people give up and go to Mexico.
This winter has been rough. There isn't very much snow. It makes some things in life easier, like the three hour drive to the airport, but thinking beyond myself, the lack of a good snowpack is troubling.
We decide on impulse to just drive south, with no real plan. We want to be out of the news cycle, the dreary weather, the winter of our discontent. We head to the most remote part of our state, the long dirt roads, the sagebrush, the dark skies.
And hot springs. So many hot springs. There's pools with stone structures around them, troughs off rough roads, a whole swimming pond. Hot springs, places where the beating heart of the earth escapes through fault lines. I love them.
The high desert warms quickly with the sun and freezes with the darkness. My contacts are a block of ice. The day before my birthday, I ask my mom for a sign she is somewhere out there. When we get up at four in the morning, our breath a frosty cloud, faint aurora stains the sky. I feel peace.
I don't want to go home, and we meander north toward my old stomping grounds, where I worked when I was thirty-three years old. The milkshakes at the remote store are just as good as I remember. It still seems like I could draw aside a curtain and step back into that time, when everyone was still alive, before Alaska, before getting old.
But it's fine. It's good to be wandering through the Great Basin now, exploring. We find mysterious graves. How did two Civil War soldiers end up out here? What was this old townsite? It's good to break out of the familiar, try to drive roads that aren't possible, be flexible and not know where you will sleep.
I want to always be like this. To avoid routine, even if it's only in small ways. To seek out adventure, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable. To just drive south sometimes, because why not drive south, with a map and without a plan.
There were decades when taking off like this wasn't possible for me, so I breathe it all in. I am deeply grateful for it all.
This post was such a joy to read! Where we live in northern Romania, in a small village, the villagers themselves always brave the winters here. They have no choice, because they have animals to take care of. We have an Australian who lives in the village, but he almost always flees the winters and goes to Italy or back to Australia. The Dutch man stays, the British woman is here sometimes and not here other times, but we are always here in winter, soaking up every snowy day we can get! No sunbathing in Australia for us, for we enjoy winter very much.
I'd enjoy winter even more if we had hot springs like you guys!
I share your joy in rambling down remote roads, exploring what you find, thinking about the lives that have been lived there. Thanks for bringing us along.