I love road trips. As I write (and Steve drives), we are 40 miles outside Flint, MI. I didn’t know much about Flint until Michael Moore shone attention on the horrible water situation and the significant poor population affected. As we move toward Flint, I think about water and its lifeline to keeping us alive. Yesterday Scott Pruitt resigned as EPA director. I’m glad he is gone; he is unlikeable in so many ways. Still, following in his limited tenure are individuals who will likely continue the policy reversals of Pruitt. Who speaks for Flint and its residents? 

I love road trips because the landscapes of this country and the many others I have visited are a story, unfolding the plot and opening my creativity as I fill in the storylines. I imagine the peaceful pond with young lovers getting to know each other as they canoe along the edges, out of sight of interstate 69 with cars and trucks roaring close by.

I assume the black Lexus SUV, proudly displaying the notice that one or both inhabitants were graduates of Michigan State University, are proud of their alum and the comfortable life it afforded them. 

Although I love road trips, I have disdain (getting worse) for GPS. GPS follows a logical path to help you get from point A to point B. GPS doesn’t tell a story. GPS doesn’t point out the unknowable, unexplainable. GPS didn’t tell me to look in the cornfield at the deer. GPS hasn’t commented on the thunderstorm that roared through Ajax, Canada last night and cleared both the sky and humidity for the glorious travel day we are enjoying.

My eyes appreciate the different greens of the landscape, almost as if they were intentionally sequenced. And then my eyes meet that of the long haul trucker we just passed. I wonder what the trucker thinks as he drives through state after state, sometimes indistinguishable except for the GPS proudly welcoming you to Michigan. 

I ponder the stories he could tell, and likely won’t. Perhaps collecting secrets is part of the allure of driving truck.  

And for all I love about road trips, I long for days where a map was all you had available for navigation. Maps teach us scale, direction, shape, population, connection, landscape, and how to find the off the interstate roads that take you to such places as Cawker, Kansas, - home to the biggest ball of twine. And yes, I have been there.