3 min read

Traffic

The twinkle of headlights is the tenth circle of hell
Traffic
Headlights from Franconia Notch © by Dave Graham

I dislike very few things on this planet more than traffic. The constant jarring movements forward, inevitable brake lights, hotheaded drivers, and general disruption to the serenity and calm of a highway unfettered by traffic frustrate me. However, it oozes with potential as a virtue delivery vehicle, especially if patience has been on your radar. I wouldn’t wish traffic on my worst enemy most days, but in the dark recesses of my mind, it equates to Dante’s 10th circle of hell.

After a long day of watching the sun and moon collide in the afternoon sky, it was time to pack up and leave. I watched close to 50 planes take off from the airfield, from lowly Pipers and Cessnas to the mighty Gulfstream that just casually arrived from Teterboro, NJ. It was a perfect capstone to the thrill of a celestial dance.

With Waze running my route home, I had to make several choices: do I take the side roads and try to dodge traffic, or do I stay on the highway and navigate the frustrations of bumper-to-bumper hijinks on the highway? Opting for the latter was perhaps the better, given services and whatnot along the route. Still, the mind wonders if I would’ve ended up home simultaneously if I had listened to that disembodied voice of computational wisdom. Regardless, the highway was my route home, and I followed it diligently.

Eleven hours later, 195 miles or so, I rolled in, worse for the wear, slightly loopy from smelling the petrol and rubber of my close-knit highway family, and ready to go to war over poorly constructed highways. I averaged 17 miles per hour over that journey, which, at 4:30 am, had taken me 3 hours. That’s eight additional hours of questioning myself, my faith, my belief in the universe’s grand design, and my fellow humans’ sanity. To say that my patience was tested would be the understatement of the year. I’d sooner wait for job offers to come rocketing through the digital tubes of the Internet than deal with that level of mind-numbing driving.


As they say, hindsight is 20/20. I’d also argue that hindsight often laughs at our ridiculously poor decisions in life. I knew that going into this eclipse shoot, I’d be forced to reckon with traffic on the way home. I knew I could take two primary routes, one more direct than the other. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew that I could make it home in one piece with my sanity intact. At the time, I didn’t realise that route number two would’ve resulted in me arriving home hours sooner and in a more mentally sound condition.

So, as you can see from the picture above, the line of headlamps adorned the concrete and asphalt corridor we drove. The open windows, conversations, arguments, and people walking the breakdown lanes made the experience more human than not. The loud songs on the radio, the snacks eaten out of boredom and not needed, and the need to pee consistently when cars were moving made it all the more fun to relay to you all. Truth be told, I’d instead have been stuck doing this trip with Emma in the passenger seat than anyone else, but I still managed to get back with much of myself intact.

These moments make the stories bigger, better, and more robust in the retelling. They’re the not-so-squishy parts of the narrative with people in the centre but circumstances surrounding them. They make the mundane an adventure, the frightfully boring into the modern-day rendition of Michael Douglas’ “Falling Down” from 31 years ago. You begin to wonder where reality distorts into the fanciful, where the road less travelled becomes even more desirable if only to escape the blue Ford Ranger dangerously lurching up the steep grade of Franconia Notch in the wee hours of the night. It’s beautiful chaos, written in petrol, sweat, and tears.

I’m glad to say my faculties are intact, and two days past this event, I can convey, perhaps in more words than necessary, the joyous frustration of an eleven-hour journey through hell.

I’m sure we’ve all had these moments, whether in the driver’s seat or in an office chair. We’ve had the opportunity to get our virtues in order and to find out what we’re truly made of. It may be volitional at times and others wholly undeserved, but coming out the other side has undoubtedly added another beautiful patina to our indelible personhood. And the process, traffic, eclipse, or otherwise, is a cause for celebration.

May it ever be so.

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