I hadn’t been on a vacation trip in years. I’d left town a couple of times, but always for business or something I “had” to do. This was a “just because” trip – one that would have been savored best with a companion, but was served up fine solo. It was karmic.
Even though my stress level had been at “high rev” for what seemed like years, I was amazed at my own unconcern regarding when I left and arrived. It was a five hour drive from my home to Newport, OR. Surely I could find those five hours somewhere between 8am and Midnight. When you travel on your own for pleasure, and there is no pre-packaged agenda for you, hurtling yourself through the transport just to get there seems silly.
I called my Mom as I was pulling out of town at 2:00pm, to ask her to leave a note for someone I had forgotten to notify I would be gone. “You haven’t left yet? GO!” Her words echoed those of several friends I had communicated with that morning. I felt like a recalcitrant chick being shoved from the nest. I didn’t stop to question the shoving. I wanted to go. I needed to go. I needed to break the compelling rhythms of “life at work” and “life at home” and get a freshened perspective.
I made it down I-5 and into Oregon easily. It was a drive I had made many, many times. As I cleared the inevitable traffic in Portland, the vacation karma kicked in. I found myself musing “Why do dangerous interstate traffic curves have fancier names than other features?” In Seattle they are the Duwamish Curves, in Portland they are the Terwilliger Curves. Does their treacherousness make them somehow additionally poetic? I shrugged this off as fancy, still resisting the karmic call to let go entirely the control of the day and just be “in the moment.”
As I entered Marion County I noticed a white fleet car in the lane to my left with the word “Corwin” printed on the door. I looked at my car clock, which was conveniently working at that moment. It clearly read 4:04pm. My friend “Corwyn” Craig Allen was just starting up his weekly poetry open mic in the virtual world of Second Life. Uh-oh! Karma was calling.
I stopped at my favorite Oregon rest stop sometime after 5:00pm. The sun was still high in the sky, but the light was starting to adopt that amber trademark that signals its lean towards setting. I would be chasing the sun out of the Willamette Valley and over the coastal hills to Newport. I fortified myself with a “car broiled” Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich which I had been tending on the dashboard since I left home. It was nice and gooey – just as it should be. I had noted as first one side, then the other, worked up a nice head of steam in the Ziploc bag on the sunlit dash. Washed down with some ice cold lemonade from the thermos I had packed, it tasted like the ghost of sandwiches from a dozen of summer trips past, laced with the excitement of a child strapped in the back seat of the family car. “Are we there yet?”
On to the challenge of Corvallis! This is the point in the journey where I leave the interstate and journey via Highway 20 to the coast. It is one of the worst thought through interchanges in the state. I have long joked that in the State of Oregon, if there are not at least three signs for it, it does not exist. Corvallis is the proof of concept. I always think I have suddenly lost my way – Corvallis panic! Someday I should really scrutinize a detailed map, or use an online tool to sort out the route. Something tells me that would never work. Nothing short of a native guide would do.
It starts with leaving the interstate. There are two places to exit: one broadly marked, and the other one not so much. The latter is the one I really want, and I always have that terror: “Did I miss the turn off? Damn!” Then I spot the Phoenix Inn. “Phoenix” – the same name as my Second Life Viewer I use. Surely this is karma whispering enticingly in my ear. Yes, this is the right exit! Saved! But then there is downtown Corvallis. How do I always get dumped off the State Highway into downtown Corvallis ? It is college town with all the complications there in. Ever notice how college towns have four times the green road signs as a non-college town of the same size? I lose the lane I am supposed to be in according to the green signs, so I turn left and attempt to double back to get in the correct lane and stay there. In the process of doubling back I discover that I am once more in the correct lane, and heading 90% from where I was headed before. Is this real? Am I on the real Highway 20?
My shoulder is now starting to ache from being up against the car door for hours. On my way down this new (supposedly correct) lane I spot a Safeway Store. Maybe I should stop and take something for my shoulder? Keep driving. Then I make the merge onto the state highway and my good fortune is confirmed by the sight of a second Safeway before I leave Corvallis. Another sign?
Karma is starting to wrap its arms around me and I am somehow resisting it. But my shoulder does hurt, and as I leave Corvallis for Philometh at the foot of the coastal hills I vow that if I there is a third grocery that appears I am taking that as a sign and stopping. I will submit to karma. Sure enough, there is a Thriftway store, and I exit to buy some aspirin, something to wash it down with, and the last baguette of the day from the bakery section which has been underneath the rest of the bread all day and taken on a strange curved shape that amuses me. I head back onto Highway 20 and I see the sign: “Newport 45 miles.” I drive for another ten minutes and see another sign: “Newport 45 miles.” My restored confidence teeters. Did it move?
Now I am in the wandering, two-lane track of the coastal hills. In other parts of the country these would be called mountains. Where I come from “mountains” are defined in the high four digits and involve year-round snow packs. These are not that high. They are lovely none the less, despite their lack of awe inspiring height. Full of steep grades, winding curves, speed zones and passing lanes. Ah passing lanes! I remember the days when I would have confidently zipped into the left lane and sped past whomever was ambling up the grade at a slower rate. Now, years and miles later, I submit to the reality that I have entered that time of life where I am relegated to the right lane. Why? I no longer see the sense in charging the hill just because it is there. Or perhaps I am descending into the true vacation psyche. Highway 20 is having its affect on me. After buffeting me around in the Valley, it is lulling me into that vacation frame of mind that I didn’t truly have when I left home.
On the accent through the hills I stay at the speed limits in the ever changing zones. Then the winding and rolling (and the aspirin) start to take effect and I start to enjoy the sunset beauty of the ride: the road winding around a streams path, some long forgotten railway running along side, lush greens, deepening ambers, glimpses of pure blue sky. There are the sign post oddities too. “Eddieville”: who was Eddie and how did he rate his own “ville?” “Toledo”: did the Conquistadores really come this far north? “Tom Jack Road”: okay, was someone incapable of making a decision on the name?
Finally the accents diminish and I begin the descent towards the Pacific Ocean. It is a portion of the journey filled with cheats, each new turn revealing another topographical mass to be navigated. If I see another sign that says “Newport 45 miles” I’ll be in trouble. But I don’t see one. The karma has totally set in and I no longer care whether I am driving the speed limit or not. Twilight approaches and I start to see car headlights far behind me as I sidle into another right hand passing lane. I amuse myself thinking “Clearly the people who left home at 3:00pm and not 2:00pm have finally caught up with me.”
Then I make a final curve and I know, deep in my soul, that THIS is the one. Sure enough, I clear the bend and the trees part to reveal Newport as I descend the final mile to the coast. The broad Pacific Ocean unveils itself, embracing the entire horizon in her magnificence. The much chased sun dips low into the horizon and majestically sets into a bank of fog. This is the Oregon Coast after all, and cloud free sunsets are reserved for Saturday nights during the tourist season.
Some trips are karmic from the very start. Good karma. You don’t really know how or why they are. You only know that they are, and that you are glad.
by Judy Cullen
2011 all rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment