09/02/2003 - 3:57 a.m.

Magic carpets made of steel

Highway roads in the dead of night. Memories held of drives between Ames and Boone on warm summer nights with cinematic script sounding loud in your head over the companionable silence of close friends. Glances cast again on rolling through the Austrian countryside overnight to Switzerland with the others blanketed in silent sleep. Climbing the mountain roads of Montana at midnight all over again.

Safe and warm in the car, the world spins by; silent, dark, and deserted under the blazing yellow light of the streetlamps, or in the pale eerie moonlight. The oncoming cars are white lights ahead, and then red lights behind. But in spite of your speed, you're going slower than in the daytime: there's no rush, you have all the time in the world- everyone's asleep. No reason to arrive until they wake up and find you gone.

Low on the horizon glow the lights of some distant little town, stars come home, chiming planitively for their cousins in the sky to join them. Overhead, the moon dances hauntingly through the sky. She beckons to you, reflecting in the side mirror. Caution, objects may be closer than they appear.

And the miles roll on and on and on, and in that ink and silver darkness, who's counting? Time is only remembered when the sun takes his place at the end of the road, dazzling your eyes in his brightness. Little car cannot venture into the hot molten that lies at the end of that road. You reached your destination.