Road Days

I am on the road again, driving once again that friendly highway, the known road from Calgary to Vancouver. Once again I see the masifs rise before me, slowly molding and slumping their way into the soft shouldered peaks that run to the coast, watching the emerald green water pound down from the icefields and glaciers, adding their writhe and foam to the arterials that snake their way through the mountains and down to the life giving sea, carrying battered logs and the loam that will one day make lush farmlands at the deltas of the coastline.

This is an easy road. I remember it and it asks for little but my attention and care. This grey string that connects the archipelago of habitation which makes this land of Canada, these lines of grey limber that plait together the fabric of our northern civilization run bent and swirled through mountain passes, straight across plains and meadows, leap up into summits and plunge down into valleys. They are beset with the inevitable sites of construction that mark our highways in this short season of thaw, like pods of dandelions in a garden pathway, denying our pace, demanding that we slow, defying us to pass. These are the roads that make up the Canadian conscience, the lines of connectivity from village to town to city; these are the lines that link us.

Driving is an easy thing for me. It asks for little and gives much; freedom, ease, stimulation. My tasks are a gentleness; my burden is light. I stow my wheelchair, lift myself into the cavernous bowels of my mechanized mammoth, and start the engine. I put it in drive. The heavy lifting is done by the automatic transmission and cruise control. All I need do is point it where I want it to go and mechanized nature takes its course. I turn on the music and run.

The road goes by, bounded by a coloured riot of audacious greens, competing for sun and space. Trees, grass, bush and bunch, all wanting the heat and light of spring, push out of every crack and cranny along the way. Hour after hour of rolling, twisting, straightening, mesmerizing highway, lulling me into forgetting who I am and what I am. Time passes, towns pass, cars pass and I am at ease.

For a glistening, shining moment I can forget, and feel, almost, well... normal.