Driving

So last night I was driving home after the show, and I literally don't think I've ever been so tired in my life. I didn't really realize it for a while...I even went out to Waffle House with Peyton and gave her a ride home, but by the time I hit 19-23, I was so exhausted I almost pulled over to take a nap. Then I thought, "It's just a few miles home, it'd be silly to stop now."

...and then I started hallucinating a little bit. Not kidding. One of the cars ahead of me took the vague shape of a really, really big fish swimming sideways, and it seemed to be leaking green slime all over the road ahead of me. The realization of what I thought I was seeing jerked me back awake for a bit, but the next thing I knew another car looked like the tail lights were eyes, and I swear it was growing clown hair out of the trunk. I got home, took out my contacts, pulled off my dress and went to sleep. It was a wild ride.

Speaking of driving (I've done a heck of a lot of it the past couple of days), it amazes me how beautiful it is to drive through these mountains. Especially on the smaller roads that twist and curve. I think I took one of the most beautiful drives of my life yesterday, even though the day before I had sworn I would never take that road again because of the fog and the curves. Anyway, I did. It's nice to be able to reflect on the road like that...it was just like one giant poem, in a way. All the youngest trees bend over the road curiously, peeking down at the cars passing by. The middle-aged trees stand up the straightest, tall and proud, as if they aren't even acknowledging that there's a road there and that life is continuing on the mountain just as it always has. You'd think the eldest trees would have that attitude, but they don't; they stand up straight, of course, but they're the ones who bend their branches out invitingly over the pavement in a canopy and let the sunlight filter through in a patchwork. Maybe they're being inviting, or maybe they're covering up the road so that, from the outside, you'd never know there was a road there at all.

The trees aren't the half of it. This time of year there are all sorts of caterpillar nests, and with the dew that stays on the mountain, the cobwebby globs shine white and ethereal in the trees. Every now and then, rivulets appear around the bend, cascading down the mountain in a shimmer. Moss creeps up the sides of boulders the size of small houses; the huge rocks appear just as suddenly as the rivulets, sheltering and sheilding. Above everything, there are clouds that descend in patches, misty angels hovering above and around and through everything.

It's all so beautiful, and I know it can be treacherous alone, but I still see it as a giant playground. I don't think I can help it. It's something in my blood. I see those mountain streams and giant boulders and all I want to do is jump out of the car and run through the woods, playing. I want to look at all the tiny flowers growing out of the moss, and run my fingers through the slime beneath the stream water. I feel more at home out in the woods, on a mountain, than I do anywhere else, and I'm content to just be left alone to wander out there. It's why I can run away from my friends while hiking and scale a boulder with no shoes, and still find my way back to them. It's why I take off running down little paths until it somehow leads me to a huge waterfall I didn't know was there. It's why I can sit in the middle of the shallow part of a river and just watch the minnows swim around my skirts like I'm just another rock.

I feel like this is some secret part of myself I'm sharing, but it's not really meant to be a secret. It just isn't something that many people have seen in me, and those who have just sort of shake their heads when I take off running. Bless Bob's heart, he understood somehow. Not in a kindred-spirit kind of way, but in a way that made him just run doggedly along after me until I stopped all of a sudden to listen to a bird or a frog somewhere off the path. He never spoke, and I never spoke, because I don't speak when I get out like that. I just have to run. It's in my bones. It's the one part of me I know will never have to grow up.

...which puts this lyric in my head, so I'll close with it.

If growing up means
It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!