Louie Road

Just outside Yreka, CA in the shadow of majestic Mount Shasta, Louie Rd. runs east and west on either side of Interstate 5, it’s a lonely ribbon of asphalt that cuts through a treeless landscape of sere grasses and sagebrush. Many times I’ve whizzed past here at 70mph, never once getting off. Today I decided to take the exit.

I chose the eastern side and began driving slowly along the arrow-straight road. The 100 degree heat created an undulating mirage up ahead. I imagined what it must have been like for the early European settlers, driven mad with thirst, crawling towards but never quite reaching the “water” that lay just out of their reach. The still air, cloudless sky and monochrome landscape had me mesmerized, it was a deja vu fever dream not unlike those depicted so often in episodes of The Twilight Zone. I wasn’t scared. I had committed to following this road wherever it would lead me. All along the way narrow spur roads, really just dirt tracks, meandered off in all directions. Some looked familiar. I debated whether or not to take one of them just to see if doing so would alter the trajectory of my journey, or to just stay on my eponymous road which led to who knows where. I decided to stay the course after all, the journey is the trip.

At some point, I can’t recall exactly when, time became very elastic, stretching back to the moment of my birth and forward to the instant of my death. It all became circular, linear time ceased to exist. Einstein and Hawking, time trippers and mind fuckers, those two were on to something. The choices that I’ve made so far in my life and those yet to be made were all out there, stretched out before me in all directions. I traveled on through the blistering heat of the day. I was hoping eventually to come to a crossroads or a sign telling me which way to go but none appeared. I had all the choices in the world and no choice at all. I kept moving forward or was it an Einsteinian circularity of time? As strange as it all was I felt at peace, open to all possibilities and accepting of my fate, no matter what it be.

I had no concept of how long I’d been driving. I needed to stretch my legs so I stopped the car, shut off the engine and stepped out. The heat nearly took my breath away. There were no sounds, everything was perfectly still. High above me in the distance a trio of turkey vultures soared languidly, black flourishes against the endless blue. I came to the realization that here on Louie Rd. I was living my life backwards and forwards all at once. Regrets could be rectified, wrongs could be righted, or could they? When you make a choice it’s like kicking over the first in a series of dominoes, one thing leads to another and you never know how the echoes of that choice will reverberate through time. Would I change anything even if I could?

I could feel my skin begin to crackle in the bone dry heat. I got back into the car and drove on. The day wore on, the sun sunk lower in the sky, shadows lengthened, the light took on that cotton-edged unreality of a dream. I know this place, I know these feelings they’re so familiar yet trying to put my finger on it was impossible, it was in my peripheral vision and just beyond my grasp. Some dreams can be so real; erotic, sensual, phantasmagoric, joyous, sad and filled with longing. Is that what this is? Here on this road today? Who’s to say what reality is? I know that what I’m experiencing is “real” or at least my version of real at this moment in time on this road, this path that crosses the paths of so many others, a main artery pumping with life.

The sun dipped behind the western hills, twilight, soft and sensual began its warm embrace. Far away I hear coyotes yip yipping, knowing that out here the night belongs to them. With all the blue drained from the sky, the first stars begin to blink on. Eventually the sun will rise again bringing with it the promise of a new day here on Louie Rd.