The pull of deep black tarmac stretching for miles through the deserts and forests, mountains and valleys, is something that sits at the core of my own identity. The structural form of the classic road trip has been done justices and injustices, but when I connect my own life’s experiences to the road, none of that history matters. What matters is movement.

The summer before my sophomore year of college was eventful. I took the standard Christian kid pastime of working for a church camp, albeit one I had a long relationship with. In high school I would make the drive up from the desert, around hairpin turns and through blind corners until the scraggly brush of California’s high desert became tall, majestic Ponderosa pine trees.

The air always turned cooler around that second bend and I’d keep my windows down – unless, of course, it was winter and that coolness took on the form of bitter cold. My small car would fill up with the scent of vanilla and wood and that indescribable freshness that mountaintops send out into eternity. And it was here that I found so much joy, tension, relief, care, pain, and revitalization. Those mountains, with their wide lakes beckoning the sun to fall with a gentle splash into their waters, and imposing rocks turning black against the unmatched sunsets that southern California so smugly gifts its inhabitants each evening. Those mountains were my place of solace.  (more…)