The Open Road

When I  went on holiday as a child (four of us crammed in the back of the car, squabbling over the window seats, bored  with the empty landscapes, longing for the ocean), the trip seemed endless, a necessary  trial of endurance before we could reach the sea and the bliss of our 6 week annual beach holiday.

The cars were slower and less reliable then, the roads narrower and winding.  There were always incidents on the journey – punctures and the slow palaver of changing a tire, an overheated car and then a hike across a hot barren landscape in search of water from an animal water trough below the creaking blades of a windmill,  broken fan belts which required sifting through mum’s suitcase for a nylon stocking to use as a substitute.   

My father loved those trips. The adventure and challenges of the journey appealed to him as much as the holiday itself and in later years when we raced to the coast on a fast highway without incident, or simply flew down from Johannesburg, he complained that we were losing a vital part of the experience. We were becoming disconnected with the journey, with what it took to get from one place to another. 

Driving with my sister, Deborah, on unfamiliar roads through vast untamed landscapes reminded us of those journeys of our childhood.  

It felt, in some elemental way, as though we were writing a new geography into our being as we traveled  across the country.

I

It felt, in some elemental way, as though we were writing a new geography

into our being  as we traveled across the country. 

And perhaps also leaving some memory of ourselves along the way,
like a hint of trailing scent marking a territory.