• We use to travel, speed from one place to another, the road lying open in front of us like an easy woman. The soda cans we drained rattled in the back at every bump in the highway, carried along as we drank them down, waiting for us to pass through a state that offered money for what we would have otherwise thrown away. The sugar and caffeine was our drug, taken through a straw, but never on a mirror.

    Zebra stripes of barely repaired road flashed along, contrast to the endless green that carpeted the roadsides on those endless miles. I often wondered where the owners of those ripe fields lived, as I would rarely see a house. The crisp air whistled at me, bringing my attention to the window when it slid open slightly. I then had a choice to make. Roll it back up, or let the calling wind in, to suck our warm breaths out the void, adding a little bit of ourselves to each place we passed.

    I more often tended turned the handle, watching the glass barrier lower, rather then let this bit of the world pass by without our mark on it.

    The radio, when it worked, would pick up the local stations, telling use more about the people and places we drove through then the tourist traps ever did.

    We rarely stopped; the signs were more interesting then the places themselves, loud and crass among the softer hues of Mother Nature. Much like a heckler at an opera, whooting and calling at each extreme note hit. Out of place, laughable and leaving us wanting more of the same.

    The road belonged to us, in all its perfections and faults. We never questioned where the next turn would take us, never looked in the rearview mirror to see where we had been. All that mattered was what was next. What would fill our senses past that tree, bent over the road like an old man who has seen better days, what we would drink in beyond the next moldering remains of a barn, walls splintered and laying in halfhazzard angles from under a shingle-less roof, reminding me of the dead spider on the dash board.

    We questioned not the others choice of road, simply smiled and nodded to each other, our lives full of the treasure of the freedom that this never ending web of highways brought.

    And all its flaws.

    Life was perfect.