A tiny love letter to highway runs and midnight suns

I’ve driven cross country and up and down the length of both coasts more times than I can even count.

There were detours through Canada, ferries through Puget Sound and Lake Michigan, and multiple tire changes in less-than-desirable circumstances.

I did it before Instagram, before cell phones, before even a shred of mental health, and usually just with my dog and a paper map.

Living on the road for extended periods of time is not always poetic or romantic, although I’m sure the van life community would fight me about that.

In fact, there’s quite a lot of monotony (and clarity) to be found as a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway.

People always used to ask me if I was afraid to be out there by myself, not knowing where my day would end, existing in the detached outer space limits of one-way communication in the form of postcards or brief calls from a phone booth.

I’m not sure how comforting it was to hear my answer, which was, “I’m more afraid of staying here.”

I often found myself driving on some long stretch of highway at 3 am with the windows down, a cup of cold truck-stop coffee making me regret every decision I’ve ever made, and some middle-of-nowhere radio station rotating between rambling on about Jesus and playing songs to keep me awake.

And they always play the same songs

No matter what station.
No matter what state.
No matter what DJ.

Here’s the playlist:

“Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey
“Faithfully” by Journey
“Missing You” by John Waite
“I’m On Fire” by Bruce Springsteen
“Turn The Page” by Bob Seger
“Night Moves” by Bob Seger

Now, in what dark universe Bob Seger and Steve Perry end up sandwiching John Waite and Bruce Springsteen, I’ll never know. But I’ve heard this same playlist from Oklahoma to Kansas to Michigan to South Dakota to New Jersey.

Even on a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert, and highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive.

And it makes you wonder about the sentimental listener they are appealing to. Because on these roads, you find the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels.

And you find people like me.

People on their way. People returning home. People getting lost and feeling lost and maybe getting found again. People racing to something or someone, or maybe hoping never to be seen again after driving off without telling anyone.

People in (e) motion.

There have been a few times in my life when I felt stuck. Not rooted or grounded, but stuck and wondering how I blinked and went from the unbearable lightness of being me, of turning the key in my ignition and just going to being crushed under the weight of other people, expectations, or responsibilities.

Sometimes we gotta go, but sometimes we gotta stay put.

There are lessons in both.

During one particular season of stuckness, I lived in Wyoming, next to a rodeo with a massive mountain behind my house.

And every night, as I pondered my stuckness, I would hear the cheers of drunken crowds howling at the announcer who was talking 100mph into a microphone, and most importantly, I’d hear these late-night road songs.

They would collide with the mountain behind me and land heavily on my house (and my heart), and I swore I was in the seventh tier of karmic hell. It’s surprising what can irritate you and yet be the spark that reminds you of other lifetimes.

The rodeo played “Don’t Stop Believing” no less than 4 times a night at top volume. It actually shook my house. I felt as if Steve Perry was personally chasing me out of town like I was Frankenstein.

But they’d also play “Faithfully.”

Which, if you don’t know, is a really beautiful ballad that their keyboard player wrote for his wife on a napkin one night while on the tour bus in upstate New York. The song sounds like a person who is trying their best, trying to get back on track while living on the road, and isn’t quite sure how it’s all going to work out, but is willing to do it anyway, to do whatever it takes to reconcile their life whether that means getting into right relationship with themself or someone else.

It’s a song about surrender.

Whenever I heard the opening lines, “Highway run, into the midnight sun,” I was propelled out of stuckness and right back to chapters of complete freedom and the intrinsic, unshakeable, everlasting lightness of being me.

Me. Creepy motels. Hot showers that feel particularly good after 15 hours of driving. Spinning the dial on the radio with one eye on the road and my bare foot pressing heavily on the gas. Naps at deserted rest stations, 40 miles from a town that everyone has long forgotten about. Driving that beautiful road between Nashville and Memphis in the fall. Camping, bonfires, hot springs, and reluctantly meeting new people who just happen to have excellent stories and details that I’ll remember for a lifetime. The lights of Lincoln, Nebraska cutting through complete blackness from 100 miles away. Leaving handwritten love letters in restrooms for faceless strangers to experience being secretly chosen and spoken to through the static of the universe, offering them a moment of pause and something to smile about before they hit the road again. Lightning storms rolling across the plains. Bartering with biker gangs at gas stations. Passing through Cheyenne, Wyoming, and knowing that it’s time to exhale because you are officially in the West. Chaining my tires up like a master Shibari Dom on the side of the road in a blizzard and praying to make it through dangerous mountain passes because apparently I have a survival kink.

Seasons of stuckness are built on the foundation of some incredible stories. And we couldn’t have one without the other. If I never felt stuck, never felt invisible, never felt restless, irritable, or discontent, I’d still be living on 141st street in Queens with my headphones on and wondering what the rest of the world looked like.

If I never wore my life down to the threads of my tires, it would never occur to me to stay still for a moment and rest.