I've never stopped to think about just how much of my short life I've spent going from one place to another. My earliest memories are of ferries and 8 hour car trips. My entire life has involved at least 15 minute commutes every day, and I've gone on two cross-country drives, hundreds of road trips, a bus trip, and countless train rides as an adult. And I enjoy the journey far more than the destination most of the time (except the bus ride, but that's a story for another time).
Yesterday I was driving and taking in the sights and smells of the weekend's long rain. The smell of rain is definitely one of my favorites, and light fog and wet trees are enormously pleasant sights on a long drive. Then I caught a whiff of something else. The smell of wet, matted fur, blood and gore, freshly burning rubber, and excrement; and something else, something implacable; perhaps, if you'll indulge me, it was the smell of fear and pain, but I cannot rightly say.
I saw a poor dead thing in the middle of the road. Not a skunk, perhaps a raccoon or 'possum, maybe even a large cat; whatever it was, it was smashed beyond recognition, and clearly a fresh kill, because there was no hint of the sickly sweet scent of decay about it. i looked at the twisted, wreck of a creature and felt sad. Yet I kept driving, and i didn't even roll up the window... I just kept right on enjoying the journey.
This morning when I drove past that spot, it was no longer there, but the bloodstains and the skid marks remained. I briefly thought of the poor animal, and but quickly forgot it and returned to enjoying my trip.
Yet here I am, sitting in a computer lab. Now that there is no vehicle taking me along a familiar path, no splash of rain on a windshield, no roar of an engine accelerating to distract me, my thoughts return to the pitiable thing whose life ended on a highway one morning. Soon my head will be filled with information about Greek architecture and I will once again forget, and then when I leave here for greener pastures, I'll be taking a different route... but tomorrow morning, I'll come by the same spot. And i wonder... will i be mindful once again and think of the dead thing and wonder about its life? Or will i be absorbed by the road, and the wind, and roar of the engine and simply by-pass the small memorial without thought nor care?
