For the Love of the Drive

After the Loveland Section which is heavily rooted in cities, towns and neighborhoods, the Williamsburg Section is a long drive out of town punctuated with two lakes- William H. Harsha Lake and Grant Lake. This is a very different drive altogether.

Looking back at this section, my drive, notes and photographs, I started thinking about Sunday drives and driving just for the love of the drive and nothing but time to watch the view unfold before you. I thought about drives where you pack a snack because a break is pulling over along a county road, leaning back on the hood of the car and listening to cicadas and crickets sing. I thought about drives where seeing another car on the road is something that happens sporadically; the road is your companion, not other drivers. Will this way of spending the day become extinct with the ever growing popularity of televisions built into the cars and a constant push to do more and multi-task at a feverish pitch? Will we still drive just to drive?

This blog, which I plan to turn into a book, is all about unplugging and taking in the drive. Sure some sections will be in towns and cities and it could take a week or more to really explore all there is to see.  But just as often, possibly more, what there is to be seen is the drive away from town and the view from the road. Maybe the art of taking a drive on back roads will become the way we decompress from a constant bombardment of stimuli. We will swap the sound of phones and message alerts for the sound of gravel crunching under car wheels and wind whistling through open windows. We will trade in our smart phones, if only for the day, for a newspaper and homemade sandwich at the local diner. Google will be replaced with information found on historical markers and docent lead museum tours.

All the gadgets and toys we have created to help us do more and do more efficiently should be used to give us more free time not less- more free time to drive the open road, not chain us behind the tiny screen of a phone or laptop.