Spots of sun reflecting on the metal backs of cars,
blotting my vision with pockets of too-bright light.
Towering trees like razor beams cutting through the January afternoon,
flickering in my eyes like pictures on a projector screen.
Three roundabouts,
at least two local highways,
27 minutes on a freeway,
one long bridge.
Around a dozen stoplights.
Mostly single-laned roads with cars lined up like ants on either side,
winding through neighborhoods, forests, and farmlands.
A lone gas station right before Deception Pass.
The ocean on either side of it with a rock island in the middle.
Two lakes,
one unknown body of water,
one creek.
Navy planes with bodies so big and close
they encompass the entire frame of my sunroof.
A field, sometimes filled with cows,
sometimes opening to mountains in the back,
and a pumpkin patch shack stagnant in the swamp winter grass.
This field is the lone break, a marker between Oak Harbor and Anacortes before I am swallowed by the trees again. My 1995 Honda Accord winds down the road like a beetle through blades of grass, passing a golf course across from three oil refineries, sitting and puffing smoke in and out of existence. I weave my way onto State Route 20 and follow it for over a dozen miles before I get on I-5 North to Bellingham where one more bridge waits, followed by more farmland surrounded by mountains. Sometimes the gray outlines of city roads and buildings linger in my blind spots, cutting through the soft dirt of freshly plowed fields and breaking through the pines. Sometimes I strain my head to catch a glimpse of the rundown train tracks and abandoned cars on the outskirts of old mill towns, rusting and sprayed with paint, and watch the sky turn purple as the sun sets beyond the wetlands.
I have done this drive what feels like a thousand times, and every time I notice how the green-gray of the choppy waves over the edge of Deception Pass makes me wish I were on a sailboat going far away, stopping at those tiny islands in the distance like the sailor I once dreamt I’d be. I notice the tall trees dripping in moss makes me wish I were smaller than I am, small enough to not see the way they stop before touching the sky, small enough to run through them until they swallow the noise of the cars and airplanes. I notice how much richer the green of the fields look when bathed in sunlight, how much easier it is to see how beautiful it can be in the light of day instead of swathed in monotone hues of November gray. In early winter weeks, I watch the golf course sink beneath the onslaught of rain, a single park bench still visible at the highest point but untouchable. I notice the snow-capped mountains on clear winter days, their lines crisp against the bluest sky, and wonder what it would be like to curl up among their peaks like the Sleeping Lady in Alaska.
These are the moments I hold onto when the faux leather of my steering wheel peels beneath my fingers and the sun-bleached fabric of my seat starts to smell like mildew and lavender oil. When the existential dread of turning twenty and graduating college in the same year and everything it takes to get there starts to settle in like a pit in my stomach, I watch it all pass me by. The trees, the bluffs, the pumpkin patch, the golf course, the stoplights, the cars. They go so fast but there is always that split second where time stops, where their blurred edges smooth over as they freeze in the frame of my window, before they keep going.
Years from now, when I no longer have to do this drive, I’ll miss the strip of sky sandwiched between the trees, the sun on the moss, the feeling in my chest that reminds me how fleeting time is. I’ll miss driving slowly over the Pass as people shuffle along the edge, watching the waves and the jagged rocks they have shaped, and the sun that sets aligned perfectly with the edge of my window. I’ll miss the feeling I get when I drive through a place familiar but still so unknown, the shop fronts I’ve seen but never experienced up close, the fields of green I’ve never sunk my rainboots into, or the roundabout exits I’ve always passed but never taken.
Out of all of it, I think I will remember the first time I drove down this road to go home, the way the tall grass bent in the wind and the blue back of my dress stuck to my skin from the humid summer air. I’ll remember the brief pauses in time, the glimpses it gave me, gift-wrapped in late August light and black-spotted cows. The plump orange pumpkins dotting muddy green fields in October. The lingering December snow on January drives to school. I’ll remember the boundless, limitless feeling of child-like wonder peeling through my ribs and rippling through my chest at the sight of the world outside my window. And for one moment, each day, time stopped for me.