I remember the first time I did it alone. It was only a few miles, and I was following my dad in his car because he had to take it to the shop. But I didn’t care. I was 15, and I was driving by myself.
A rush washed through me, and all the cliches of feeling free and invincible suddenly came true. I had practiced driving many times before with one of my parents, and it surprised me how different the feeling would be with just one less person sitting next to me in the car. But it was, and I was hooked.
Driving is therapy. Driving is the interconnectedness of man and machine. Driving is leather-wrapped steering wheels and the tires gripping the road and custom shifter knobs. Driving, to me, is contemplative; it is equal parts being painstakingly aware of the road and ensuing responsibilities, and completely leaving everything behind. I think sometimes about how the first human must have felt the first time he/she traveled faster than they could run or be swept by the river. I mean, it’s not like they grew up being carted around in the back seat of caveman dad’s sedan. The concept of speed was, at least for a time, something we either only observed in some animals, or didn’t even understand at all. And in that first moment a human traveled 75 mph, was he/she giddy? Was he/she moved by the experience? Did it awaken something in them?
I think aside from procreating, “moving” might be man’s elemental imperative. We moved out of the trees, out of the caves, across the lands, across the oceans, and into space. We crawled, we walked, we rode animals, we made wagons, cycles, trains, cars, planes, jets, rockets, and the space shuttle. Our evolutonary arc is marked by further expanding movement…and my connection to that inherent compulsion to move is fed as the roads of black asphalt, loose gravel, and unpaved dust move beneath me, one mile at a time. Driving creates and requires a syncopated orchestration of systems human, mechanical, and natural. The direct connection of my mental awareness and physical movements to the space-age machine that is my car to maneuvering through nature itself inspires me not only in the action itself, but inspires me toward the possibilities of where we will move next.
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