Memories of Green

The car feels good.

She roars, snarls as I pull through the gears. Not all of my cars have genders, but this one does, although I might also refer to her as it sometimes. I don’t think she’ll take it personally. The gear shift feels good. I lathed it myself, years ago, out of some imported South African padauk wood. It’s hardwood, strong and dark, almost black now. It was a bright orange when I first cut it, but it has weathered with sun and age. That makes two of us. There are trees all around me, but no wood like this grows in this part of the world. It was and currently remains the only piece of woodworking wood I have ever spent money on.

They’ve added some guard rails to the winding road, in the spots people always go off, but it hasn’t changed much aside from that. I could probably drive this road in my sleep. In fact, I think I have a few times, in dreams. It’s too burned into my memory to leave, which is notable because I’m very forgetful about so many things.

I blast through the corners. I don’t have to think about what’s up ahead, I already know. I’m sure I’ve driven this route over a thousand times. The road is dark and wide and a bit wet. Back and forth through the hills and trees, it follows the shoreline of the lake, more or less. The weather is sunny, but it’s cold, and I’m mostly in the shade. The sun shines in gentle rays through the thick trunks of evergreen trees, and it flashes in my eyes in random rhythmic bursts.

I don’t think I’ve changed the oil in this car in maybe three years. That’s not a great idea, by the way, but I rarely drive it now, and I haven’t had the desire to work on it much. It’s a relic in a way, a piece left of a different time in my life, when this is the place I was and this car is what I was focused on. Building it, racing it, improving it.

I don’t have a destination today, I’m just driving. It’s a nice day. I have time. Nothing better to do and nowhere better to be. I have some time to kill here before I can and want to move on. There are some things I’m waiting for, and they can’t be rushed. I must be patient, which has never been a real strong suit of mine.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like you’re stepping backwards. Progress is sexy, but the nature of life seems to be that it can’t happen all the time, or at least if it does, it doesn’t feel like it. I am back in the part of the world I was born in, for reasons that are bigger and more complicated than just me. I guess it’s almost always more complicated than that.

Regardless, it’s hard not to feel like I’m repeating things, like I’m stuck a bit. I do not like feeling stuck, but it’s not the only emotion I feel. There are a great many, some of them lovely, some of them painful, many of them both. I never expect to find as much here as I actually do, but usually when I feel like I’ve finally figured out what’s going on, life has a subtle but unmissable way of reminding me that I haven’t.

Of all the gifts graced on us by the universe, I think humility might be my favorite. No other trait so empowers its holder while also empowering the world around them. Sometimes it can present the same as poor self-esteem, but it is wildly different.

One of the advantages of not believing yourself to be better than others is that it is also much easier to see others as not better than yourself. We are all equally small, and so we are all equally mighty, all entitled to the same things, whatever they are. All of the people in my life whom I hold in high respect are humble, on some level.

Time for some fire roads. I call them fire roads, but they’re probably owned by the timber companies. Timber companies built a lot of what’s out here. There was a mining boom years ago in the west. Gold in some places, but also a lot of coal. The mines have been closed for a long time though, and timber has been the big industry here for quite a while. I dart up a side road I know, heading up into the hills, to where the county pavement ends.

A lot of people who live here have opinions on the timber companies, and most of them are probably fair ones. I have quite a few as well. For some, timber is the industry that killed the forests, eradicated millions of trees so old they were archaic great-grandfathers by the time the colonials came. It is the industry that struck a dagger into the sacred order of nature. For some, the timber companies are the reason there’s food on the table, gasoline in the truck, and blankets on the bed.

All perspectives are valid to someone who has the time to look for nuance. Things are rarely black-and-white. For everyone here, like it or not, timber built many parts of the world around them. As far as I’m aware, the timber industry and the taxes from it paid for lots of roads, schools, many bits of industry and convenience people now rely on. Perhaps we didn’t need all those things, but we’re used to them now, and I imagine most people would prefer to keep having hot water and paved roads. Maybe not, but I think so.

This car does well on gravel roads. It’s tight and controlled, and I know how to control it. We’re synergized well because I built her, and I built her how I wanted. Well, some Japanese guys in 1989 built her initially, but I built a lot of it. I changed it. I wonder what they would think of my hack job modifications to what is (or at least was) really a brilliant piece of design. They might not like it. That’s okay, though. It’s like a tailored suit, and I tailored it to me.

I sort of remember the turns of these timber truck gravel roads, but not as well as the main road. They’ve been rutted out since I was last here. Rain erodes everything here, and it seems like no one is cutting trees up in this part of the forest right now. It’s easy to get the car sideways. It feels almost effortless, the way she slides around the corners. I’m leading, but it’s always a partner dance. The tires are kicking up bits of loose gravel that ping-pong off the rear fenders I’m currently really glad I built, otherwise they would be ping-ponging off my head. It’s blissful to drive like this again, I used to do it all the time.

I’ve been going different directions these past few years, which is a good thing. Travel and change are good for my focus and perspective. Focus and perspective have been my main reasons for writing in most cases, and they are also two things I lack a bit here. I think that’s part of the reason I haven’t had much motivation to write for almost a month. A lot of my writing lately has been about processing a bunch of new information all at once. It’s harder to do this when one is somewhere familiar. There’s too many distractions, too many memories, strings attached.

I find myself more overwhelmed by the beauty of this landscape than I expected. Everything is green here, everything is wet and alive and stark. I grew up here, so in a way, I didn’t really think about it then. I guess at some level I just assumed that everyone grew up in a place like this. But it really is beautiful, and I see that beauty so much more easily now that I don’t spend so much time in it.

The road is starting to get a bit intense. The ruts are getting worse, and I am losing the ability to stay out of them. Time to turn around. I could push it, but that’s not what I want to do today. I find a suitable section of un-rutted road and make a smooth(ish) 11 point turn, doing my best to not put the rear wheels in a ditch, because I don’t know if they will have the traction to come out of it again.

Back down the windy logging road, to the country roads, to the highway, to the city. Back to the present. Time to get back to what I told myself I was supposed to be doing today. There’s always things to do.

I’ve always thought that the past is a beautiful place to visit and a terrible place to live. Somebody else probably said that first, but I don’t know who.

I make the final turn from the winding road back onto the highway onramp, drop down a gear, and hit the gas. Onwards.