Empty Rural Road - a photo on Flickriver

Empty Rural Road

Last night was another one of those golden-red-orange-skied, takes-forever-to-set sunsets. Even though it is almost mid-October, it was a cozy-warm evening. You know – the stuff of Indian Summer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuHCfqyIDgg - "Cosmopole," Cantoma

I was down Warner Bridge way on the Kankakee River, just west of Kankakee River State Park, about 55- miles south-and-west of Chicago. Fishing was lousy – just four fish in four hours and I mostly caught about 100 pounds of weed on the hook that required constant cleaning. River weeds, dammit. :-)

So, I gave up fishing early. Sunset was just occurring.

I loaded up the car, and decided to head home, but first I’d stop at Taco Bell to get a Mexican Pizza (mild sauce), two hard shell tacos and a Cherry Pepsi; one of my favorite “what I eat while driving back home after fishing” guilty pleasures. I wouldn’t be seen dead driving into a Taco Bell in the City (fast food ain’t good for you, don’t you know), but it is way OK while wandering out and about

But instead of turning north and heading for home and The Bell, I turned south. It was too nice out to go home just yet. "What is south of here," I wondered? By my city-boy, congested-living-on-top-of-one-another standards, "a whole lot of nuthin' in particular," I thought.

I took Warner Bridge Road south, and crossed over river. I came to the stop sign at Illinois Rt. 113, my last chance to head home. Warner Bridge Road came to an end at 113, and on the other side of the road was another road - one with no name, just numbers. I've noticed that a lot of rural roads have no names, just numbers. They have a similar look too: part black top, part gravel, no yellow or white divider lines to define a lane and tell you which side of the road is which (then again, there is no "one side of the road" for double-wide tractors, trailers, combines and other behemoth farm equipment).

I turned the car and headed south.

The sun was setting to my right and it cast a distinct yet eerie salmon-colored light over this wide, flat, 270 degree vista of sugar beets, soybean and corn. I drove south past farms, barns, homes and endless fields of the great food basket that is midwest America. I felt as if I'd come to the end of the earth and could drive right off of it. There are no 270 degree vistas in the City: no uninterrupted horizons. No horizon lines at all actually.

I came to the road you see above. More numbers; no names. I can barely remember names now, much less numbers and letters. I didn’t know where I was, but I know I wasn’t lost. I was where I wished to be.

I stopped and took this pano image out of my car window. With the car still in drive and one foot on the brake, I took a quick three-shot panorama, sweeping from left to right. It was then I noticed a big old, combine harvester coming up behind me like some great lumbering dinosaur with six, bright-white eyes glaring (you can see him in the rearview mirror). Physically and psychologically, they own these roads; right of way is theirs, not mine. Time to move along.

I turned right (west) onto a smaller more gravelly road and drove straight into the sunset. The sun sat out there like a big orange disc. Driving into it delayed its setting a bit, I believe; it seemed to hang at the horizon for a few extra minutes. I drove until the sun and it's afterglow was gone and the sky had turned deep purple and black. I drove until the landscape had turned dark - country dark. Quite different - amazing dense and deep - than City dark.

It must have taken 30 minutes for the sun to set completely and it was exquisite. I didn't take images as I drove – I simply stared into sun and the sky. I drove past decrepit barns and silos, abandoned dwellings, rusted equipment and used cars for sale, and nice, neat, new homes. They all looked empty. I guess the occupants were in the field harvesting, kicking up all that dust in those Combines. “Who lives back here?” I wondered. “What do they do? What are they like? Are they like me? Am I like them? Are they like those rural characters on TV?"

The radio had been down quiet, but I heard something. I turned it up. It was one of those Christian stations one hears in the country but not in the big city. The station's numbers on the dial were unknown to me. Generally speaking this music is not my cup of tea: period. But, at this moment I heard something. I turned it up. They were playing the most incredible, ethereal choir music I’ve heard in a long, long time. It sounded like Xmas music, but the announcer would periodically read Bible passages and say "this is dedicated to Christ."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwaPAPk0rxY - "I Need Thee Every Hour," Mormon Tabernacle Choir

The music had no words, or with the windows down and the Indian Summer air pushing in, I couldn't hear the words, only these incredible mixed male and female heavenly voices, harmonies and melodies. Men's singing voices are the sound of God. Women's voice's are the sound of Life, Creation and the Universe itself. I could not turn it off or down and simply drove with it. Eventually, the music and sunset ended at the same time. Wow. I was, wonderfully lost - completely relaxed, just as when I meditate. I guess I had meditated.

Yeah, I probably shed a few tears. I don't know why (although at my age I seemed to get the weepy eyes at just about anything). Perhaps I was simply touched by it all (with no explanations necessary, thank you).

Once the sun was gone I took the next a right turn on the next no-named-but-numbered road and worked my way north and east. I came to Wilmington, Illinois, the last city on the Kankakee River before it empties into the Des Plaines River on its way to the Mississippi. I went though Wilmington, got some gas (I love small town gas stations (sort of outposts of civilization in a wilderness thing to me) and a bottle of sweet tea. I came to Illinois Route 53 – a slightly wider, bonafide two-laner - and headed north out of town.

All of this time I encountered barely any traffic. I am from Chicago; I don’t understand and can barely comprehend "no traffic." It feels as if I were the last man left alive. I decided to take Illinois Rt. 53 instead of Interstate-55 or I-57, one of those big, three-lane Instate highways available. 53 would eventually cross Interstate-80 coming in to Chicago from Iowa and I could cruise home from there.

It was a Wonderful evening and a Marvelous night for a leisurely backroads drive and then cruise to home with music, warm air in October, stars above, cornfields, darkness, quiet, the remainder of this season's lightening bugs and a quiet mind, empty of thoughts. I am glad I chose that route instead of a straight shot back to Chicago.

By the way, I never did get to Taco Bell. Oh well, next time.

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Taken on: October 12, 2013

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