Ohio Girl

It is undoubtedly a sign of bad character to be driving a stretch of highway surrounded by the most beautiful scenery on earth and at the same time be highly irritated. My traveling companion and I decided to make the long drive from Seward to Fairbanks to get in some of the 24-hour sunlight before our scheduled activities resumed later in the week. She offered to drive, I assumed, because i had driven from Anchorage to Seward. In fact, she is terrified to let anyone drive her anywhere.

For a self-proclaimed road-trip Queen, such as myself, this is startling news. Two lane highways, she declares, are not safe. Ever. She knows this to be a fact as she was once a statistics major. Maybe she’s right, but Alaska is a land that will only begrudlingly give up the space for two lanes. Interstates are unnecessary and would be somehow profane.

For me this is a gift. I have gone back and forth across the country and have often exited from four lanes to two intentionally. I love to wander through rural landscapes and small towns. I love to discover roadside shops and oddities. It feels as though i am traveling the paths of locals and therefore getting a vague sense of their daily lives.

The fact that the two-lane of route 3 rolls out through Denali National Park with snow-capped mountains in all directions, past movie-set rivers giving free rides to ice tired from the trip down the peaks, all while being incredibly blue and bright, is nothing less than nirvana.
 
Unless perhaps a high school friend who once downed southern comfort in the back of an old buick while some boy took on hairpins at 80 mph all while giggling is transformed to a blue-hair right before your eyes.

She drove under the speed limit while asking outloud why people were passing. She jammed the brakes at the first sign of a speed zone, or construction. She moved the car to the shoulder as cars came in the opposite direction convinced they were enchroaching upon her lane.

It was a very bad dream that was only bearable in comparison to her reactions to MY driving. She stomped the floor at imaginary brakes at the slightest hint of a curve. She read speed limits and other road signs out loud. If the needle so much as leaned towards 70 she instructed me to slow down. (The speed limit was 65 for those of you wondering if i am being unkind.)

I breathed in the mountain air and exhaled slowly reminding myself that my horoscope predicted i would be learning new lessons this week. Perhaps the lesson is that i need to slow down. Or, that my irritation, that my whole damned life in general, is small. So very small when placed inside the context of a vivid wilderness doing what it will. Maybe the lesson is simple patience. I breathed in the possibilites and accepted the counsel of the eagle that affirmed my horoscope as it flew by.

Then again, i said to the eagle, maybe the lesson is that i should have brought some Valium.