Portsmouth Abbey Church Talk: Arthur Shipman '17
Road Trips
As a child, I was well acquainted with the feeling of being packed into a car with my family and just being driven. Usually I was given a non-descript destination, likely hours away, to a relative's house or something. After that, it was just shut up and get there. I was secured into a car seat, and my parents drove me and my four siblings wherever we were expected to be. I never put much thought into how our Toyota Seinna was actually going to get there, and I didn't care. I trusted my mom would get there safe and sound, and she always did.
That isn't to say that the drives always went smoothly. On pretty much any drive longer than an hour and a half, I would empty the contents of my lunch onto whatever sidewalk or sibling was fortunate enough to receive them. I remember a particularly lucky house in my uncle's neighborhood where the speed limit went from a steady 65 to a winding and residential 25. That always got me. But I always just got back in the car, excited to see my cousins. Whatever queasiness and strife inside me was gone with the chunks of hotdog, as the saying goes.
My mother was always afraid of traveling with the entire family all at once, for many valid reasons. If we were to travel by air, it would be a fortune both ways. And who wants to drive 5 kids and all their stuff any longer than a state or two? With those conditions at play, the longest vacation I went on was with my dad, to see his side of the family in Texas. The same issues with acceleration and deceleration followed me into the air, in case y'all were wondering. In the summer of 2014, however, my mom had a change of thought. A huge, long family trip to Texas! Halfway across the Continental US and back! In a Minivan! You can imagine my excitement. This extravaganza would take 3 weeks, taking me so much further into America than I had ever been. The roundtrip would take 3400 miles give or take a few dozen miles, but I measured it in wondrous places, and memories.
Me and my family went from Newark New Jersey to Western Maryland, and from there traveled through the mountains of West Virginia, through Louisville Kentucky, Memphis Tennessee, and Little Rock on our way to see my grandparents in Dallas. My parents were sensible enough to realize that since we were going on such a long trip, we might as well enjoy it. We took the scenic route, stopping at as many restaurants, scenic overlooks, and national treasures as we saw fit. One of my favorites was the excursion to Mammoth Cave, the most expansive cave system in the world. To enter, I had to descend a cool, moist stairway down a shaft of limestone. The walls were covered in condensation, and cave critters: crickets the size of my 12 year old palm, and spiders bigger than that. Once inside, I saw a collection of the biggest stalagmites, stalactites, and natural cathedrals this side of the Mississippi. I peered into chasms where I could only hear the rush of underground rivers, and only imagine the life below.
On the way back from Dallas, my parents veered off of the interstate and onto The Natchez Trace Parkway, in Alabama. Easily one of the most beautiful roads in America. It weaves through Alabama, through petrified swamps and pine forests overridden with kudzu. We stopped at a Native American monument, a manmade burial mound acres across. A couple miles up the road there was a channel 15 yards wide, trampled down over thousands of years by the bi-annual passage of buffalo. I wouldn't have noticed it if not for some informational sign. These beautiful things go unnoticed from the air, and even from the interstate. These so called fly over states, schools, people, have much more to offer than what meets the eye, if only we take the time to take the scenic route.
--September 21, 2017