Article 3 - “FOR THE LOVE OF ASPHALT” June 2006 edition of First Church of The Streets

It all began with love affair of the road.

    As a child, I grew up with a major highway nearby. When I stood at the end of my driveway waiting for the schoolbus, I could look all of the way down my mile-long road, and see a vague impression of cars whizzing by. It felt like they were going somewhere exciting, while I was consigned to the miserable destination of having to tolerate the dreariness of classes, counting the minutes to lunch or recess. The mile to get there seemed to take forever, a journey to master in itself.

    Later on, as I acquired the independence and mobility of a bigger kid, I accomplished that journey of a mile. I'd take my bike or walk to the service road, and could see the cars up close from a vantage point that blew away my ponderings and peerings from afar as a child holding a schoolbag and a lunchbox. There was a path in the woods that ran parallel to the highway, which led from ground level up to a sand dune, where you could see the water tower several miles away, and reams and reams of trees. You could see the cars, too. Little specks they were, dashing into your vision for a brief second before disappearing on the other end of the viewfinder, going to wherever they were going. The dunes had a pitch steep leading towards the service road and highway. It wouldn't take much of a misstep to make you ride on your butt an avalanche that would careen you into the traffic of the service road below. I could stand on that dune for hours, the rhythm and hum its own sound of meditation. Perhaps it was from that experience that I learned that peace could come in the middle of manmade machinery as well as the silence of nature.

    So it was no surprise that I relished actually being on that highway, wanting to take it to the furthest reach possible. I got the opportunity many times, as my father worked at the farthest end of the highway for a time. Part of the thrill of going to work with him on my vacation days was being on that road, watching as each exit clicked by and took me further into the unknown. I was, in that moment, one of those specks that I saw zooming by as I watched on the bluff, experiencing close-up what I normally only saw from afar.

    And as I grew older and my means of transportation grew up from foot and cycle to automobile, I would drive on the highway myself. And eventually I would comb most of the region where I lived, choosing the vast stretches as much as I could and avoiding the hassles of traffic, which was somewhat of a challenge in an overly congested commuter-bound suburban section of New York City. But it was possible, going the wrong way away from the city as my father had, going at nighttime when the bedroom part of the bedroom community was in effect, staying away from downtown districts and shopping malls.

    I loved the long stretches simply because they were long. It was a way of taking a pause from a clogged and bloated culture that threatened to swallow every second of life and every iota of energy without giving much of a return. A way of entering the meditation room without having to commit to any dogma, except a code of freedom. And when I went back to that bluff overlooking the highway, I could almost envision the permutations of the road superimposed over the trees, hiding all the roads that I had driven and marked. I would see the end of the highway, and know it stretched further. I had grown up with the highway, and now I was ready to go further, to take it to the end of the road, from one ocean, to another far away.