It is winter, and it is pitch black. I turn over and look at the ceiling to check the time.
Again.
We have one of those cool clocks that projects time and temperature wherever you point the movable arm so it can be seen from a reclining position. Makes clock watching very easy. Maybe too easy.
I take a slow, deep breath and tell myself to relax and sleep.
Again.
With all the practice I've had you would think I could just sleep until the alarm wakes me for these early morning airport runs. But no, it isn't working. I tell myself I can take a nap later.
Airport runs from Sanctuary are a whole different animal than those in San Diego. There is the distance, for one thing, and the dark. Dark up here in the woods is not like dark in a large city. Especially in the early hours of a winter morn. If you have never experience life outside of ambient city light, you will just have to take my word for this.
Finally it is time to stop clock watching and just get up, get moving. I quickly brew a cup of ginger tea, my best remedy for all kinds of travel sickness, grab a couple of bananas and a package of crackers, and we are off.
These runs in winter remain dark for the whole trip to the Sacramento airport and back again. On my last return, the sky was just beginning to lighten and the black crest of the Sierra Nevada stood bold against the dawn.
But now it is spring. The clocks have already sprung forward. This time I drive home with the visor down, trying to keep an exuberant sunrise from blinding me. Even at this early hour on the highway that stretches from San Francisco to Teaneck, New Jersey, the one that goes "over the top" as folks say around here, I am but one of many travelers, all of us moving steadily towards the light.
I have been on this road in all hours of day and night. I have driven it with wipers frantically swatting rain from the glass, and with eyes focused on the taillights of a semi truck in front of me when I can't see the road lines for the thick fog. I have learned to follow lanes that seem to shift like the concrete barriers in Maze Runner. (Will the work on Interstate 80 ever be completed?)
And sometimes, we take the 'back' route. It is a little longer, but I call it the scenic route. We head west on our way down the mountain and wind through flat lands where cattle craze and U2 spy planes practice flying overhead. I find it more serene. Except this one time...
"I can't not go," National Asset is saying in a very firm voice.
I am looking out the window as snow is quickly accumulating in our woods. I have never driven in this kind of snow before, the kind with huge, heavy flakes, and I seem to have misplaced my nerve.
"Okay," I finally say. "But I am going to drive to the airport so you can teach me how to do this so I can get back home again."
I think of mail carriers and their motto - neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds - and I get in the driver's seat. The wipers bat huge, wet flakes back and forth. I use my follow-the-taillights-in-front-of-me technique as The Asset instructs me on use of the brake and all the what if's I might encounter on the return trip.
It begins to rain as we reach lower elevations and I start to relax. The fields are green and lovely and the cattle bunch in groups with their heads low. I drop him off at the terminal and loop around to return home. I see color in the review mirror. A brilliant, giant double rainbow arches above me and I reflect on the Biblical promise it represents.
Now I begin the assent up the back road. There is little traffic on this early, extremely wet morning. As I reach the altitude where we had forged our way through falling snow I smiled. The clouds were breaking, the sun was rising. And the road was completely clear of snow.
Another successful trip to the airport. A dusting of pristine snow on our road (no one else has driven on it yet this morning).
And another Sierra sunrise to savor.
