What View Now?

Oberlin Diaries 7*: Road Tripping
We took the long way back. Returning to Chicago from Ohio earlier this week, we avoided the interstate, cutting through fields and farming towns. I wasn’t in a hurry to return, but wanted to savor the pastoral sights, smells and sounds that I wasn't able to fully enjoy the last several weeks while teaching. The journey was an adventurous respite between one intense, immersive experience and another. We stopped for ice cream at a busy local outlet, and unnecessarily detoured for ButterBurgers, passing drag racing speedways and still operational drive-in theaters along the way. The traffic builds too soon, drawing us into the vortex of the city. I am not so much renewed as newly informed by the trip, my perspective slightly jarred, my ability to wonder invigorated. Later this week, I will look out across the lake from a 25th floor conference room with both a yearning and knowledge, their interplay informing, sustaining, vigorously drawing me forward around the next bend.