There is something about being on the road, is there not? I recall many times when we stuck our thumbs out to parts unknown back in the sixties and seventies after gorging on Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg. Yes, petroleum gets us there, but there is still something intriguing and mysterious about putting the pedal to the metal and meandering across the American landscape. The Midwest, where imaginary prairies tickle the imagination and corn fields disappear into the unconscious, has been inundated by flood waters and the reconstitution of wet prairie, wherever one’s gaze falls, over the past few weeks. It has been a spectacular and dramatic ride today, on my way to teach a Permaculture course in Ohio. The sedimentary rock beneath the surface is the foundation for my wheels. All around the wild cherries and honeysuckle blossoms are in full bloom. The highway endlessly swerves and dips across the landscape, setting up patterns for the eye of the designer to ogle and inventory. What was here before, eh? It is the form of the land that reveals the mystery, the eons old movement of the continents that tells the story of metamorphosis, uplift, erosion and ice. Yes, petroleum got me here today, but petroleum cannot subsist. What does subsist is the revel and awe that I feel for this land, no matter how human beings have manipulated it. We cannot destroy the bedrock that holds us all up…or down.
