Hello from Room 512 at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Annapolis, Maryland. It’s almost 11 a.m. Checkout time. Hit the elevator button and wait. Exit into the empty lobby. Place the room keys on the front desk and say thank you to the person behind the counter. Grab one more free coffee for the road. Onward.
I was in the mid-Atlantic region this past weekend to attend the Annapolis Baygrass Festival, which included squirreling away some interviews for this bluegrass book I’m currently working on, and also hosting a live audience panel with musical legend Sam Bush and others. The festival’s “Workshop Pavilion” was packed to the gills as we talked shop. Hearty banter and friendly laughter echoing across the property and into the depths of the mighty bay.
Merging onto U.S. 50 and across the Bay Bridge, I soon found myself on quite a pleasant cruise through the Eastern Shore of Maryland along U.S. 301. This was the second time since June that I’ve found myself on this exact route. It’s wild, literally and figuratively, how peaceful and serene the Eastern Shore is, especially with the organized chaos and confusion of modern people, places, and things of Baltimore and Washington D.C. in the rearview mirror.
The Eastern Shore is what most of America was a century ago, thankfully. It’s parts of the country like this area that put my heart and soul at ease, if but for a moment. The older I get, and the faster society gets in the digital age, the more I purposely seek out places like this, where you can roll down the windows of the truck and breath in deeply the sweet air, the endless farmfields untouched by developers with no regard for nature, with greed in their eyes.
No matter, sadly. It is what it is. Everything is getting swallowed up. All the pristine land. All the fresh water. All the silence of the midnight hour, whether by noise or light pollution. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t constantly thinking about running away from “it all” and aiming the nose of my vehicle towards the desolate and remoteness of places like Northern Maine or Minnesota. Sit on the front porch in utter silence, sipping on a cold beer. The noise of the modern world is deafening, and it makes me very tired (you too, probably).
And now? I’m slowly moving through traffic on the outskirts of New York City: the epicenter of noise and light pollution in the United States. It’s a familiar scene that I know well. As a native Upstate New Yorker, I’ve wandered around “The Big Apple” a good bit since I was a teenager. Going to college in Connecticut, I’d jump on the Metro-North train in New Haven and head for Manhattan on the weekends for a bevy of reasons: concerts, baseball games, first dates, New Year’s Eve parties, or for no reason at all (the best reason).
Interstate 95 North. The endless skyline of Manhattan to my right, just across the Hudson River. The endless roar of airplanes coming and going from Newark Liberty International to my left. The hustle and bustle of every single moment of this spot in the universe. Bumper-to-bumper automobiles and tractor-trailers, even if we’re all going over the speed limit to keep pace.
When the cars decelerated to a brisk walk upon merging onto I-80 West, I was able to hear the sounds of countless crickets in the brush alongside the highway. In that time and space, I started thinking about I-80, and how I’ve driven most of it amid several cross-country treks over the years. Intrinsically, the crickets here in urban New Jersey sounded just like the ones along I-80 in the desolation of Wyoming, where I’d pull over to stretch my legs and look up at the stars hovering over the endless prairie of the Rocky Mountains.
Not long thereafter, it was I-87 North into Upstate New York. The temperature started to drop drastically once the sun fell behind the Catskill Mountains in the distance. It was the last day of summer, with fall already breathing down our necks. A far cry from the intense heat and humidity of this past summer in Southern Appalachia and the greater Southeast. That, and the sun now disappearing before 7 p.m., really conjures a somber tone for us sunseekers.
Pushing up through the Hudson Valley, on towards the Capital Region of Albany, New York. Stopped for a jog in Kingston, a greenway rail-to-trail that went under the interstate and into picturesque fields. The sounds of more crickets. A cool breeze swirling around me. Thoughts of this road trip and heading back home for a family memorial service. The raw and real emotions of loss and what it means to grow older in the grand scheme of things.
By sunset, I crossed into the Adirondack Park. The silhouettes of the ancient mountains cradling the highway guided me into the depths of this enormous landscape of wild things and joyous humans of passion and purpose. Not far above Warrensburg, like clockwork, I lost cell service. Soaking in the darkness of night enveloping the highway, I let my mind drift, thoughts of those dearly missed, either six feet under or six-thousand miles away. A slight grin of gratitude for those tightly-held interactions and genuine emotions shared.
The music of the late Cliff Edwards was now radiating from the truck stereo, these timeless melodies from over a century ago that sound as sorrowful and poignant today as ever before: “Though the days are long, twilight sings his song/Of the happiness that used to be/Soon my eyes will close, then I’ll find repose/And in dreams you’re always near to me.”
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.