PhxJennifer

The Destination is Never the Point

I love road trips. My husband would usually pick the music and navigate, and I would drive. As far as I am concerned, the twistier the road, the higher the mountains, the emptier the desert, the better. But the best part of travel is rarely the long-anticipated destination. The best part of travel is the unexpected blessing on the way.

I first discovered this when I was a teenager. I went to England with a high-school group, and was duly interested in Buckingham Palace (not my idea of a palace at all, really) and the changing of the Guard, but I found the Royal Mews (stable) much more fascinating. The Crown Jewels at the Tower of London were gorgeous, but we were shuffled through so quickly that they became a sort of undifferentiated glitter--they didn't look real. No, the things that made the most impression on me were oddities: sixteen-year-olds could drink shandy, a dreadful concoction of beer and lemonade that I wouldn't touch now with a ten-foot pole (and I wouldn't make a six-foot Pole touch it, either.) I prefer Guinness now, or a nice oatmeal stout.

The other thing that struck me was the sheer age of things. In the US, if something is 250 years old, that's OLD; in Europe, it's just getting a little patina on it. It really hit home at Canterbury Cathedral.

I knew the story of Thomas a' Becket: a politically appointed archbishop who then took his spiritual duties so seriously that he refused to 'dance with who brung him' when spiritual and political duties clashed. So when he was assassinated while praying in front of the altar in one of the side chapels, he became a martyr to the primacy of the spiritual over the political. I went into that little side chapel, and the tour guide mentioned that the two depressions worn the solid rock in front of the altar were from the knees of pilgrims that had come to pray there. Over the course of our stay in England, I had become used to seeing depressions worn in steps from the feet of people over the years--but those people were wearing shoes, they were walking up and down many times a day.

These depressions were worn in solid stone by unprotected knees, and the pilgrims were not tromping back and forth, they were kneeling quietly, praying. How many thousands of knees had there been? How much had they ached after kneeling there on the hard stone? How holy had this place become, after being filled with the prayers of so many, for so many years? Was the very stone now fossilized in holiness?

I have had other important, though less-intense, moments along the journey: reading the immortal inscriptions on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC at sunset; a drive across the Guadalupe Mountains north of El Paso after moon-set when we stopped the car and got out to see the Milky Way in all her glory flung across the sky, (modern light pollution makes it difficult to see our own galaxy any more) moments of grace shining alone or shared with others.

In the summer of 2009, as I was driving from Phoenix to Cedar City, Utah for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, I had another such moment. There is a six-mile climb up to a rest stop called Sunset Point. I think the road climbs two thousand feet in those six miles, and it's a real test of engine power and condition. If your car will ever over-heat, it will do it on that stretch of road. Big diesel trucks start out at 65 MPH at the bottom of the grade, but by the top are barely managing 35 MPH.

There are signs warning drivers to shift into lower gears, to stay in the right lane except to pass, to turn off their air conditioner to take the burden off their engines. I'm driving a 2007 Toyota Prius hybrid, I have REM on the CD player, I'm passing 18-wheelers and pickup trucks and Buicks, and I'm singing along to 'Losing my Religion' at the top of my voice. Great road, great steed, great song--what more could you want?

So it was a good moment, but nothing earth-shattering, right?

Except that it was a little less than 2 years since my husband had died, and this was the first road trip since then that I really enjoyed. Healing from grief is such an incremental process, and you cannot ever predict how it will go: I still missed my chief navigator and music programmer, but the joy--the joy was back! PhxJennifer (talk) 14:49, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

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