I've been down this route before, exactly three times, driving alone. Each time was at a watershed moment of my adult life. They were times I was experiencing some intense emotion. This emotion got locked into the road and its barren terrain, like a favorite song one hasn't heard in a long time.
This time, that inevitable intensity of the expected memory-recall led me chose this route only because it was the most convenient and obvious. I was not looking forward to reawakening the echoes of those chapters, even if it was for just half a day. Nor was I was going to go out of my way to avoid it.
Each time I had traveled this route before, it was to go between Colorado and Oregon, or vice versa. The first of the four times was when I was 23 years old, in my first car. I was heading back to Salem after Christmas break. The car didn't make it all the way there. It's still sitting in the Nevada desert, as far as I know. An intense experience.
Now on this Sunday afternoon, I pass through the town of Vernal, Utah, where the familiar jovial pink smiling dinosaur greets me like an old friend.
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| Keep your feet on the ground... |
Heading towards the Colorado border, the highway quickly becomes nearly devoid of traffic. The highway climbs over ridges and drops into isolated valleys, with not a single vehicle visible along the ribbon of asphalt that stretches ahead.
I am alone with my thoughts. The only sound is the steady engine of Bimmer in fifth gear. In this quasi-silence, the emotion-echoes of those previous trips flash in me in some chaotic order. They seem to compress my entire life into one panoramic view. It makes me feel connected to all those episodes, yet curiously remote from them at the same time, as if I am looking down at a mountain trail at the multiple switchbacks I have climbed.
On the long haul through the snowy wilds of northwestern Colorado, I am restless behind the wheel and wish for the day's journey to be over. I count the miles down in my head, and look for the progress measured by the mileage markers. At the same time I know that when I reach civilization again, I'll miss the isolation of this stretch of the road. I alternate between spaced out thoughts, oblivious to the mountains, and then being intensely aware of my surroundings.
Finally in the late afternoon I reach the outskirts of the cowboy town of Craig, the eastern terminus of the most isolated stretch. In 2004, at almost the same time of year while returning from Oregon, I explored the downtown and took pictures to upload to Wikipedia, something I did a lot back then (I don't seem to be able to find the ones from that particular day---perhaps I never uploaded them, or they were expunged as inferior).
This time in Craig I decide that a return visit to downtown is necessary, to see if notice any changes from my previous visits. Most of the businesses are shuttered for the day. Only the tiny Chinese restaurant is open. Next to it, the prominent western themed bar and grill is now out of business, its quaint cowboy sign now in decay.
As I walk back to the car, a man stumbles across the wide main street, obviously a bit tipsy after an afternoon drinking. He notices me and pivots towards me on the sidewalk, the way a drunk person does.
"Hey," he says to me, "you want a cigarette?" He awkwardly holds out his open pack as an invitation.
I'm a little taken aback. This is not what I expected. He's not trying to bum a cigarette of me. Intead he wants me to take one.
"Oh, uh, no thanks," I say, putting a strained smile on my face.
I walk past him and head back to my car. The truth is that I didn't want to engage him in conversation. I didn't want to stand there the cold, perhaps listening to his Ancient Mariner's tale. But how much would it have taken out of my life, to do just that? Why not give him a few minutes of my time? Was I in such a hurry as that?
As I drive away, I can see him stumbling through the park towards a nearby apartment complex. I regret not taking him up on his offer.
I've still got an hour to go, and most of it will be in the dark by now. As I pilot the Bimmer out of Craig, I turn on the radio. I no longer wish to be alone in my quiet thoughts.
But what to listen to? There are only five or six FM stations available in that part of Colorado. The mountains block propagation. Perhaps a country station? I reflect on how I can't stand classic rock. It grates on my ears to hear most of the songs that were popular in my teenage and early adult years, and which are still played on the radio.
It feels like a tyranny to hear them, as if I am some piece of fruit being squeezed for the last drops of emotional reaction. Musical performance was once ephemeral, a phenomenon of the moment. Now we seem locked into a permanent stasis of recorded events, a gross elevation of nostalgia to some kind of Bacchic religion of identical repetition of melody and lyrics.
As I poke the scan button repeatedly, moving through the stations until I've gone around the dial a couple times, I start to lose hope of finding anything I can listen to. Bah. Then just as I am about to shut off the radio again I hear a familiar jingle from long ago, the segue theme of an old national radio show that counted down and played the top pop music hits each week.
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| ...and keep reaching for the stars. |
The voice of the famous disc jockey who hosted the show comes after the jingle.
"We're counting down the hits, from forty all the way to number one," he says in his jaunty way.
"At twenty-four this week on our countdown is the latest hit from the duo of..."
The show in that old format hasn't been on in many years, and the original host retired long ago. It's obviously a rebroadcast from years ago. But it sounds fresh and clear, and it feels like a radio broadcast coming through some kind of wormhole in spacetime.
"Spirit, what strange and familiar noises are these?" I bellow aloud, in my best Scrooge-like imitation of outrage.
I used to listen to the countdown show nearly every Sunday afternoon when I was in junior high school. Back then I was very much into following pop music, and keeping track of which songs were at the top of the charts.
After a few minutes, it becomes clear to me that the show is a rebroadcast of the countdown from late December 1978. That was the first Christmas our family spent in Colorado. We had just moved out there that fall from Iowa. I was in eighth grade. I probably listened to that exact show in my bedroom in the basement of our house on the north side of Loveland.
Colorado was still bizarre and new to me then. It felt like a alien place, with a strange culture that I didn't understand. It felt isolated from the rest of the world, a million miles from anywhere else. Loveland felt backwards and hickish. I was not comfortable in my new school and missed my friends back "home."
I'm struck by the irony of how much I like listening to it, and anticipating the next song in the countdown. Partly it is because many of the songs are ones that were minor or obscure pop hits, even by well known musicians. They aren't the songs you hear on the radio today. Some of them I haven't heard in over three decades. I find myself singing along to lyrics that I had forgotten that I remembered.
I can't stop listening. In the growing darkness, I float down the winding road through the canyon east of Craig, following the tail lights of a truck. The radio crackles as if it is fading out. I strain to hear the host, but the show comes back to life as I come around the next bend.
I follow the show like this all the way to Steamboat Springs, hoping there is a radio in my motel room.
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