Yemassa

Speeding down a washed out expanse of highway the monotony of road travel was overwhelming. Any sense of adventure which formerly imbued long road excursions with daring vitality had slowly been sapped by the bright fluorescence of exclamation mark advertisements. The once open and wild road tamed by the regularity of service stations offering every comfort of home even that staple of yuppie sustenance- Starbucks. Gone was the highway romanticized throughout history as a proving ground for the brave and the dastardly, imperceptible beneath the veneer of utter safety was the palpable sense of danger omnipresent in the work of Hunter S. Thompson. Journeying back north through Columbia South Carolina, I-95 though spotted gracefully with wild Spanish moss covered palms was simply one more stretch of road, suggesting no more or less than the 753 miles of road surface still separating our car from home. No longer calling to the wanderlust traveler, these open stretches of road, diminished, were simply a conveyance.
The unending diversity of and burgeoning industry in “entertainment” read diversionary devices deemed essential on long car rides is a testament to how utterly road trips have been robbed of their wonder. Cell phones, televisions, DVD players, stereo systems, e-book readers, even the tiny laptop which this digression comes to you courtesy of. So homogenized has this country become that simply driving a reasonably direct route from top to bottom one would hardly notice the difference from one state to the next save a change in external temperature, subtle changes of flora, and that enemy the passage of time.
A new passion for photography left me poised eagerly in the front passenger seat, digital camera in hand ready for inspiration to strike at any moment. After the first 4 hours of car travel along this highway, inspiration was still conspicuously absent. Certainly, there were the occasional pictures of interesting trees or amusing vehicles cohabitating on the asphalt with us for brief stretches of faded pavement. Nothing though, in the nearly 400 elapsed miles suggested anything more than what it superficially was. Simply, in those 400 miles of open road through Florida and Georgia there had been nothing to marvel at, not a single recognizable instance of wonder.
As though afflicted by a wasting disease not only had the road lost its wonder, so too was the brilliance of the surrounding scenery being diminished. Trees planted in neat rows, shoulders mowed to exacting standards. In a word the whole affair had become rather, neat, a rather unnatural state of affairs for nature. As with most things in the United States, even the highway had become sanitized and packaged for safe consumption. Endless safety indications and warning signs, instructing drivers on the acceptable method for handling even the most imperceptibly inclement of weather or other road conditions. Miles of warning for a 300 yard stretch of construction. Oranges and yellows found not in lurid flora at sunset but rather industrial tape and signage. All the natural bits of nature around the road neatly manicured and boxed for convenience.
By the time you reach your fifth hour on the road the difference in perception between youth and adulthood is presented in startling clarity. Passing cars conveying children along these same roads to their eagerly anticipated destinations, their faces pressed to the car windows pointing excitedly at cars, trees, clouds, they marvel at things which I were I not determined to locate inspiration on these newly desolate passage ways would otherwise have missed. How easy it is for that sense of wonder to slip quietly away replaced by a vacuous emptiness demanding constant instant gratification.
Staring somewhat dejectedly out the window exits flew past, names of towns I will probably never visit occupying no more space in my mind than the individual blades of grass blurred into an undulating sea of Kelly green outside the tinted windows. Music and cold air blast through the car, forcibly rousing the numbed minds of those passengers idly speeding towards a destination still hours away. One exit looking like the next, mile markers the only indication that we weren’t driving on a soundstage in front of a looped reel of generic US highway scenery. The searing heat of late July in the deep south buffered effectively by the cool leather interior and superior air conditioning of the car. Circulated air was devoid not only of the heat and humidity hanging in the air just outside the windows but also the smells of the trees and the tangible damp of late summer afternoons. Our car could literally be plucked from the road surface and dropped at any other point on this road with no immediate difference to the passengers, done fast enough it’s likely we wouldn’t even notice.
Settling into that forced uncomfortable sleep of long road trips I braced my forehead against the cool of the window angling my body to tease the maximum of physical comfort from the plush leather seat. My vision was temporarily obscured by the vulgar institutional green of highway signage. Settling into the empty sleep of an idling mind, I looked out the window one last time before unconsciousness claimed me. Exit 43 Yemassa and Hampton. As though a revelation in reflective green, the sight behind the sign evoked, feeling. Curiosity for the first time in over 400 miles. An unassuming turn off of an unassuming stretch of highway somehow though it was something more than that. Bordered by a wall of rich evergreen trees, a bend in the road just feet after the turnoff robbed passersby of even a glimpse at what lay beyond. I wanted to know, what lay beyond that second turn. What was in Yemassa? Was it perhaps a sleepy little town? Something out of time where lazy southern streams drew crowds of children equipped only with their imaginations ready to explore the seven seas without the assistance of videogames or television programs laden with CGI.
The growing shadows of evergreens draped languorously across the black asphalt inviting as the silk sheets of a lovers bed daring you to explore what lay beneath. As quickly as it captivated, it was gone. A brief moment in time in which the possibility of surprise stirred in me emotion, the genuine desire to know what lay beyond those trees just out of sight. In that moment the persistent synthetic backing track of the pop music faded succumbing to the laughter of the children that might live just beyond that impenetrable wall of green. The cold blasts of dry odorless air replaced by the possibility of what the air in Yemassa might smell like, the way it would feel enveloping me in thick humidity heavy with the smell of trees and grass.
Now, two hundred miles past that accidental inspiration the lingering scent of what those trees may have smelled like colors my perception of the smell inside the car. A hint of dewy warmth making the sun glinting off the windshield evoke thoughts of what it would be like to sit by that maybe stream babbling softly in accompaniment to those maybe children imagining wonder into their world. Closing my eyes not in idle mindless unconsciousness but lost in a dream of a town I’ll never see. The maybe of what couldn’t be seen beyond those trees imagined into a million permutations of a town laying sleepily in South Carolina waiting to be discovered by someone resisting their rush.
One late summer afternoon, that person will be me. It will be the shadow of my car blazing a dark stripe though the shadow of those trees, windows rolled down inhaling the reality of that imagined air. Maybe though, never seeing Yemassa would be best. The infinite potentials of that maybe town brought home the realization that simply imagining wonder into the world is where that innocent enthusiasm in children comes from. Bounded only by the constraints of imagination, exit 43 to Yemassa breathed renewed life into an imagination that had become so consumed with reality that the surreal, the possibility of even the most beautiful maybes was lost. Luckily though, on one sleepy southern afternoon at the end of July, an unassuming turn off of an unassuming stretch of highway- exit 43 to Yemassa- imagined my imagination back into existence.