Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent
Washington, D.C.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- A good part of our summer vacation
was devoted
to America's interstate highway system. Driving this network,
one can't help being impressed with the number of frighteningly
large and powerful trucks that daily travel its routes.
America moves largely by truck; that is, it moves its cargo by
truck. Many leisurely drivers and railroad buffs may not like
it, but the U.S. Interstate Highway system was built for truckers.
Nothing as extensive and convenient exists anywhere else in the
world.
Most of the products we purchase for daily life, including the
automobiles we drive, were delivered to their points of sale by
truck.
Despite the anxiety engendered on the highway by these formidable
giants as they race and roar around us along the interstates,
each time we eat an apple, brush our teeth or drive to market
we ought to thank a trucker.
Such seeming mundane events provided me with meaningful contemplation
during our vacation.
One night during this vacation, I stared into a campfire.
Aside from its allure as a flame for roasting marshmallows or
for providing heat on a chill summer night, campfires encourage
reflection.
Is it the flighty elusiveness of the cinders that sail to dust,
the glow of the final embers, the changing forms and figures of
the consumed wood that drive us into contemplation? Is it the
inherent threat to all material things that fire represents?
All these images appear to mimic our lives in their passage of
time. We are burning up, literally, as our metabolic engines wax
and wane.
When the campfire slows to embers and to gray ashes, we're reminded
of our finitude. Is there any wonder campfires are staples of
religious retreats?
On another night, the family slept through a violent thunderstorm
along the shores of Lake Michigan. My 6-year-old slept through
the loud and violent pyrotechnic exhibit of nature. My 9-year-old
woke up, frightened. The storm could be compared to a battlefield
bombardment.
Just a few weeks earlier, we'd been told, a storm with
winds up to 135 mph sliced through the property, uprooting half-dozen
aged trees. The clean-up crew counted 169 rings in one of the
fallen trees. Nature acts with life-threatening force.
The houses were undamaged, but the tale added to the anxiety my
son felt. Comforting him forced me into reflection on these daily
threats of life.
During our week of leisure, I purchased a copy of USA Today. I
rarely pay much attention to its colorful weather map on the back
of its "A" section, but this day it drew my eye and
mind with its nearly monochromatic redness. The entire United
States was printed in deep, hot crimson or burning bright orange,
indicating the two highest categories of temperature on the map's
key.
That map quickly and dramatically told us the nation sat in the
grip of a heat wave that eventually would claim upward of 120
lives.
My family swam that day in Lake Michigan where the water temperature
was recorded at 81 degrees. Local residents told us they'd never
known the lake to be so warm.
Reading that temperatures around Washington, D.C., ranged
in the high nineties and that Texas was entering its fourth week
of daily temperatures above 100 made me reflect on our fortunate
timing for vacation.
We drove behind a friend's car on a dirt road when a fawn bounded
in front of our caravan and stopped at the edge of the woods.
We halted and stared. The young deer stood behind its mother's
flank. The mother resolutely stared at our two-car entourage.
For several minutes it became apparent this mother would not flinch
in the face of danger. She stared down the invaders.
In one flash, the fawn dashed into the underbrush, but the doe
stood her ground. Only after we eased our brakes and slowly rolled
away did the mother turn and dart after her child.
For me, the encounter was a lesson in courageous parenting.
It's a lesson I needed in a week of big rigs, fires, thunderstorms
and heat waves. It was an even bigger lesson in the demand for
contemplation in our modern lives.
We often view summer vacation as a reprieve from the meaningful
quests of our lives, but this week with friends in Michigan impressed
me with the heavy load of meaning that even our days of leisure
can transport.
All those teacher-assigned essays on "My Summer Vacation"
might seem less burdensome if writers were challenged to dig for
meaning in the mundane moments of leisure rather than simply narrating
the events they deem as "fun" or "entertaining."
Meaning demands reflection on the events.
As my summer vacation ends, I'm asking myself if we journalists
shouldn't also challenge ourselves to more reflection on the events
of the day. We've become masters of narration, but we remain minor
players in humanity's search for meaning.
Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net