180 Miles

I've been on the road a lot this week. Between last Friday and today I've logged roughly 21 hours in the car. That's three trips up and back to the northern side of the greater Chicago area and two trips into and out of downtown. I'm exhausted. However, the long drive has provided me with some excellent self reflection time. Driving across the long, straight stretches on I-57 I can let my mind wander.

As my mind wandered through my past this week I was reminded of another time in my life when I spent a lot of time in the car: my second year of teaching (Fall of 2003-Spring of 2004). That was the year that I lived in Spring Grove (the first Norwegian community in Minnesota!) and commuted two hours every other weekend to Eau Claire to visit Kaia. I also drove twice a week to  La Crosse so I could donate plasma (I did this because I had nothing better to do and I could make some cash at the same time - back when gas was $1.50 per gallon) and played several gigs per month with dance band that traversed a large swath of Western Wisconsin. Lots of car time.

I have a distinct memory from this time, stumbling out of Biolife Plasma Services on a deep, dark Wisconsin winter night sometime in January of that year, my body pumped full of room temperature saline after spending an hour in the donation chair, shivering before I even left the building. I remember the cold bite of single digit air temperature as I walked across the parking lot to my forest green Subaru Outback and the dark stillness of the atmosphere. It took an eternity for my car to warm up as I drove out of the city limits into the vast expanse of a driftless winter night. I crossed over the Mississippi River into Minnesota and impenetrable darkness as the soft blue lights from my dashboard struggled against the arctic chill of the evening. Greg Brown was on my stereo keeping me company, singing "Lipstick on a thermos cup, lust and whiskey fill it up, and smoke blows from the chimney to the moon..." as I made my way through the night towards my little house in Spring Grove.

I don't miss living alone in a small town in southern Minnesota. Sometimes, however, I think back and remember how cozy it all felt. To be all by myself careening down those winding southern Minnesota roads in my Subaru, going up and down over the hills and bluffs of the Mississippi river, the moonlight shimmering on the snow covered fields. I felt like I was the only person on earth. Then I would arrive at home, greeted at the door by two cats, and crank up my ancient furnace as I settled in for a late supper of fish sticks and rice.

There's something nostalgic about it.