April on The Road

 

April Fool’s Day was the day after Easter this year. I was walking to work, remembering the joy of Hot Cross buns and coconut cream pie, when the light hit me…its traveling time. The air was clear, and damp, and chilly, but I knew, in my bones, that if I just, as John Haitt suggests, Drove South with the one you love (or alone), I would hit the perfect traveling weather in one day’s drive.  I could sit in the doorway of the Ark and watch the light fade wearing just a sweatshirt. April is road trip time.  I almost turned around and headed home to pick up the Ark’s keys.

Long road trips are deeply embedded in my psyche. My parents embarked on one when I was eight; we were gone  from July until April because we had to stop for school and to make some money in Florida. When I was 29, I took three months off from work, bought my van, and drove south, via Cape Cod and Beaver Falls Pennsylvania, heading to New Orleans. The first day—which was April Fool’s Day,  a Monday and the day after Easter-- was eerie. I was exhausted from Easter week at the Bakery, there was no one else at the campground where I stayed the first night, and, despite packing maple syrup, tamari that spilled onto the shag carpet and gave the Ark a distinctive odor, and my wok, I neglected to bring along any food for an easy dinner OR the leftover coconut cream pie from the party the day before. I almost headed back to New Hampshire.

It took a week or so to find my rhythm, both for driving and meal planning, on my own which was the point of the entire adventure. As I observed in my journal of the trip—“it is a spirit journey to test myself and my ability to handle daily living and the occasional crisis on my own.”  I drove. I sang loudly. I read. I learned to cook beans on a propane stove and that mayo is far tougher than we think.  I hiked through our National Parks. I talked with strangers and made friends. I visited people along the way and had several riders, planned and unplanned, as well.  I was never afraid although I was occasionally lonely. A woman on her own, on The Road.

A few years later, living in Oregon, I needed to go home for a wedding. Once again, it was April. My roommate at the time thought I was crazy—why not just fly? No, I drove south, picked up my friend Sherrie, and we drove East together, taking the southern route.  She packed snacks and picked up local papers when we stopped for coffee in the mornings. We replaced the stove which had been stolen the year before in Seligman, Arizona on Route 66, which upped our cooking game from boiling water on a backpacking stove to being able to fry potatoes and toast bread. Everyone talked to us; the guy stopping traffic on the highway, people in diners, and baristas in college towns. We made it home just in time. The Ark swallowed the shoes I had packed for the wedding but that was ok. I wore my flowered sneakers instead. And then, we drove back—a month total—of two women On the Road.

And so, April is, for me, a time of migration, of long drives, of chilly mornings, and of talking with strangers.  When the light balances between chilly and warm, right around the equinox of the year, there is nothing I would rather be doing.