driving highway 80, too early, on January morning

Even routes mundane as a morning commute, can be radically changed by these long winter nights. Setting out in the predawn, nothing is the same as before. Landmarks are taken away by the darkness. There are very few cars at this hour and never many street lights to begin with. What is left, after leaving town, is a long empty mountain highway stretch, whittled down to just my high-beams and the sketching of painted lines on the asphalt.

Time and distance is changed when visuals are removed. Even huge important shapes like mountains are mere suggestions of form in the moon-light. I find myself wondering how long I have been driving and how far along I am. The once simple trip seems out of order, like a map crumpled up into a wad them smoothed flat – wrinkles across roads and miles. The moon gets in on the trickster game too. Even though I know this stretch is far from straight, carved into the sides of the Eastern Sierra, the hang of the moon above seems to swing nearly pendulum-like above. Enclosed in the rattle and hum of a vehicle, there is the illusion that the driver is always going straight and the world swings around.

Addled by the oddity, I pull over and turn off the engine and then switch off the headlights. I sit in the shell of my car for several breaths, listening, watching for the coming day up there in the sky. Opening the door, I step out into the morning. There are hints of blue to the sky, and even lightening that will widen into sunrise in a while. It is cold outside but easier to find my place there.