Emily Articulated: Open road

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

I hit scan on the radio, searching for anything other than static, until a familiar song broke through the cracks and pops: “… all the roads we have to walk are winding/ And all the lights that lead us there are blinding./ There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how …”

As the lyrics bubbled out of me, emerging from some long-forgotten place where Oasis remained intact, I was 16 again, curving along Wisconsin backroads, singing the same words with the newfound freedom of a driver’s license. The whole world opened to me — as soon as I could master roundabouts and four-lane highways.

My first summer of driving, I road-tripped 16 hours to Boulder, Colo. While most of the kids I knew white-knuckled their way to the Fox Valley Mall — just 45 minutes of straight highway away — I wanted more. Maybe it was fearlessness, or maybe it was the fear of being stuck in a life that felt small, that drove me a thousand miles from home (my own little Lewis-and-Clark pull toward the unknown). But that’s likely hindsight talking. In reality, that first brazen trip was probably just an undeveloped prefrontal cortex; my Wisconsin-kid version of an Idahoan teen hucking cliff jumps at Schweitzer.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

I remember crossing state lines — first Wisconsin, then Iowa — until my eyes grew heavy. I called my mom from a Holiday Inn parking lot. “Yes, I got a room for the night,” I lied, as I locked the doors and fluffed my jacket into a makeshift pillow in the front seat. What I should have said was, “I’m not spending your $100.” Money was hard-earned at home, and I wanted to fund my own way (which on a minimum wage Subway paycheck meant car-camping and home-packed PBJs).

But, the next day, seeing the mountains emerge out of the flat expanse changed me. It had taken 16 hours, but I had transported myself to a new world — a new version of life and myself at the end of an open stretch of road. All it took was a few tanks of gas and cups of coffee, and my 1,000-person town was literally and metaphorically in the rearview. Like a moth seeing flame for the first time, that freedom was hypnotic, a feeling I knew I’d be chasing across a lifetime.

As the final lyrics of “Wonderwall” faded — “You’re gonna be the one that saves me (that saves me)” — I switched off the radio. Only the gentle whoosh of tires and the slow clunk of windshield wipers remained, wiping away the dew left by morning fog.

Often, it’s the silence I crave as much as the open expanse. The car, with its motions like my own muscle memory, demands just enough focus that the rest of my thoughts are forced into quiet, manageable order. Instead of grasping at fleeting ideas as they whirl by, I’m afforded the space to hold each one, examine it and then let it go.

At 16, these thoughts were of small, inconsequential things like the test I was worried about passing or the boy I wasn’t sure I was ready to call my “boyfriend.” But they were also of heavy things, like my mom rebuilding her life after divorce or my dad slipping deeper into addiction. They were thoughts about what I wanted to do after high school, what kind of person I wanted to become and what made up a fulfilled, meaningful existence.

At 33, the thoughts I sorted through were a blend of past and present — 16-year-old musings seen through the lens of knowing how it has all unfolded. My mom’s rebuilt life, cut short after just two years when she passed, reminding me not to wait on my dreams. (What are my dreams now, anyway?) My dad’s lonely end, marking the importance of caring for myself and my relationships like they’re the most important things I’ll ever steward. And life after high school defined by freedom to be my own boss, to set my own schedule, to see the world, to learn from people who are different from me and to continuously seek new ways to be inspired

The fog hung low, clinging to the mountains like it knew I wasn’t quite ready to have my thoughts swept away by the big views. But as my mind cleared, so did the clouds, revealing peaks so vast they erased every lingering thought. I curved along the road, in perfect harmony with my present and my past — the golden aspen leaves glittering in a jubilant greeting: “Hello, you’ve made it. This is what you’ve been searching for.”

“Yes, I got a room for the night,” I told my partner as I pulled into the parking lot of the Mountain Lodge Motel. I locked the doors to my car and headed inside.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.