The Pelagic Nature of Long Drives

Sometimes, as the mind wanders during hour two of a five hour stint along Interstate 40, I start to imagine the highway like the open ocean's water column, its verticality mapped onto the horizontal axis.

Tiny drifts of plankton, moving up the column to eat even tinier oceanic rotifers, and, as the sun descends behind, and the hours pile up and we start driving towards night, it's almost like we're heading higher and higher into the safe darkness.

The tiny animals that drift up in the night and then back down as the sun brightens the sky constitute the biggest mass migration on earth, and it happens daily. Trillions upon trillions of organisms feel a margin of safety once it gets dark, and then stuff happens. They move up and feed on smaller things, and larger animals eat them.

And larger animals eat them. And tiny fish eat them and become plentiful. Eventually they school in enormous numbers, and away the food chain goes.

The life cycle in the open ocean, the pelagic life cycle, and my brain spends half its energy on surrounding traffic, and the other half imagining that we're just a marine mote riding up and down the column.

Interstate 40, from Barstow to Amarillo, is long, straight, and far more mellow than the similarly long and straight I-5, or even I-10. I-40 is quiet, populated by few trucks---slow moving larvae in the column---and virtually no jerks that feel they must be in the fast lane going the speed limit. 

I thought that I wrote this piece before, and when I couldn't find it under my searches, I thought I should type it up. Why now? I have no idea. I've been hammering away at a large project and needed to decompress, and haven't been sleeping well, and maybe that's been bringing me back to these weird metaphors for the slow 1800-mile boogie.

Also, I like the idea that something could be titled "The Pelagic Nature of Long Distance Interstate Driving," and that then the title could seem too verbose for a blog post, and that it could be edited down to what we see here.

Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe its about Artemis II hurtling back to Earth today. About solitude, about making slow progress, about placement in the vast sea on earth...also, about the funny looks people give you when you use a word like 'pelagic' in normal conversations.

Me: Can I get the receipt on 8? (Corrie tracks the cost for work.)

Attendant: 'Course. (Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt) Long drive, huh? Where y'all coming from?

Me: Ooph...southern California. On the road to past Amarillo...

Attendant: Wow! Howzit going so far?

Me: (Still in a daze) Well...you know, just contemplating the pelagic nature of the drive...

Attendant: ..........

I think I have something here to explore more later. Always procuring projects, like Sick-Boy and his "contacts." (Also, random Trainspotting reference!)