Buried Treasure

 

I do wonder sometimes what motivates people, in the way they drive. Here's two examples from opposite ends of the spectrum that I experienced the other day. It was just after five in the morning and I was bob-tailing, driving my tractor without a trailer attached. Out on the highway a car came up from behind going considerably faster than me, until he came alongside me. He then slowed down and traveled with me. Traffic was light, the rest of the road wide open. Why would this person choose to put himself at risk by staying close to a big truck? I had to slow down to get rid of him.

That same morning, in a construction zone on 465 another truck, pulling doubles (with two trailers attached) merged onto the highway. He got into the middle lane and came up behind me. It was obvious that he wanted to pass me so I moved over into the granny lane to let him. Sure enough he came barreling past just as we were entering a lane shift; the narrowest, most dangerous part of the construction. I let off the gas to get it over quickly and thought, “Couldn't you have waited just a minute?” Then, back out on the straight away it turned out that he didn't actually want to go any faster than I was originally traveling. We continued down the highway at the same speed. He just wanted to be first, to be out in front. It was that important to him that he would risk both a wreck and a ticket, I was going 10 mph over the posted speed limit to begin with.

My contention, my theory, is that much of what people do when they drive is unconscious, and that it is largely ego driven. The first guy was a pack animal, afraid to be alone. He felt safer being with another vehicle, even though in reality he was at a much greater risk. Had I not slowed down he probably would have stayed right with me even if faster traffic came up from behind and wanted to pass. What I call an “Indiana roadblock,” although the behavior is not limited to this state. The second guy was just an asshole, with a childish need to be first. Unfortunately the second behavior is by far the more common one, and it often happens that the aggressor not only doesn't want to go the same speed in the end, but slower. It happens all the time.

Ha, ha; when we got onto I-65 and the speed limit went up it turned out that my truck was governed faster than that other guy with the doubles and I passed him back. I admit, there was some satisfaction there. I can be a childish asshole too, sometimes.

Let's see...Oh, that cloud ceiling that I found so lovely the other day continued to be a delight long after the pyrotechnics of dawn. Though not violent the air was turbulent, and varied so that the overcast was made up of many different kinds of cloud. There were archipelagos of cloudlets off the coast of continents, there were ripples, like sand beneath the waves, and sometimes great sweeps seeming to rush across the sky, though stationary. From behind it all the sun sent his beams radiating through the rifts. At one point there was the shadow of a light rain on the horizon. The angle of its descent was perpendicular to the shafts of sunlight making an X in the sky. On the other side another rain was falling precisely with the angle of the beams. The windshield of a truck is wide-screen.

X marks the spot. Treasure be buried here. I found myself reflecting upon treasure, and how the best things in life are free. Now Tutankhamen had some treasure; such beautiful things. The civilizations of the Americas too, the jewelry and those tiny golden figurines. And to think that the Spanish melted it all down to make what; coins? They deserve to lie at the bottom of the sea.

 

high morning light

 

The sky was so beautiful this morning I wanted to cut it like a cake and eat it. A mid-high ceiling, pretty solid, but broken enough that when dawn came there were multiple layers of phenomena, both vertically and horizontally. Vertically through the rifts and the mini-cumulus tops of the cloud, horizontally along the long flat bottom to the horizon.

The sun rose. I was heading east but the cloud shielded me. I have spoken before about how light suffuses mist, a cloud on the ground. The same is true aloft. There is no “edge” to a cloud. What we see is generally not a reflection off of its surface, but the accumulation of its density as the light passes through it. The rarified is incandescent, each particle spectral; the drudge an infinite variety of grays.

It was so beautiful. "Watch the road Fool! Check your mirrors!"

 

Morning Light

 

It never rains but it pours, or not at all it seems. Earlier I wrote about the deluge we experienced here in Indiana; I haven't told you about the subsequent drought. I think Monroe County got the worst of it. While I was out and about in the region getting rained on occasionally my friends here at home were watching the satellite images track the storms as they split and left us high and dry. I heard that from at least three different people independently. I believe it's true. While the entire region is parched Bloomington and environs are desiccated. I was just up in Michigan, above Lansing and we have more early color here than they, only ours is because the leaves are drying up and falling from the trees, not because of the turn of the season. The eastern end of Griffy Lake, where the boat launch sits, is dry. My neighbor was out on his riding mower to chop up the fallen leaves and I could barely see him through the cloud of dust he was kicking up. I thought it was Pig Pen (Charlie Brown). One can reasonably ignore those warning signs in the bottoms that say “do not cross when flooded.”

That's not to say that it's not still Beautiful around here, it is, always. Green is still the dominant color though the corn is amber and the soybean plants are turning their end of season yellow. It's been a good summer for me, despite the drought. Usually it seems that summer is over before I've had a chance to really experience it, but this year I don't feel like I've missed anything. Perhaps that's because I was out in it on my bicycle, in contrast to all those years I only saw it from the cab of my truck. Still I hate to see it go, and I'm apprehensive about how the fall will turn out, it being so dry, though it will undoubtedly be beautiful, regardless.

I sit writing this in the gray half light of dawn. I see dawn almost every day, but from the cab of my truck. She always comes in beauty, revealing incrementally the landscape I'm passing through and renewing my vigor as she paints the sky with delicate colors. Until He rises as a challenge, demanding action, if I happen to be heading east. How novel then, how wonderful to experience this enchanted interlude here in my own home. On my days off I usually stay up late then sleep in. I might waken shortly after dawn, but the light is generally broad by then.

So what am I doing up at this hour at home? Grrr, we're touching on a can of worms there. I'm just off of a three day weekend, for Labor Day. True to form they couldn't let that happen without making life difficult in some way. They scheduled my first trip back as a load to Owasso, Michigan, which meant that I either had to drive on the holiday or leave out hours earlier than usual. I set the alarm for 1:00 AM.

The route is over 600 miles round trip, just what can be fit into a trucker's eleven hours of driving for a day. So if there was any delay, in a traffic backup, say, or for a mechanical breakdown then I might run over the fourteen hours of my “tour of duty” and thus be unable to make it back to Electrolux at 5:00 AM to get a normal load the next day. In the past on this run I've been given follow up loads that could be picked up late, or with open delivery times. I'm not sure if there wasn't such a load this time, of if it's just a function of my new fleet manager's incompetence, but I wasn't given any load for today. I was just told to be ready by the phone this morning, an hour ago.

Oh yes, I stayed up late last night, which was nice, and I'm enjoying my time here with you in the still soft but strengthening light, but I can't really afford another short day. What's the use of getting a longer than usual trip (I get paid by the mile, plus stop pay) when I get a shorter than usual trip the next day? And the paid day off was nice, but the rate isn't generous. Oh well, I'd better stop myself before I start boring you with my complaints, and I do have more things to complain about.

As the sun rises, shining through the foliage, a soft pattern is thrown onto the western wall of the living room gently moving behind the still, sharp outlines of the houseplants in the window. The light is orange. Birdsong replaces the insect cacophony of the night.