Today we packed up a rental car and drove to Ohio to hide from the world this winter. We’re going to hunker down and shelter-in-place through this terrible season that has adopted the grammar of a hurricane. After navigating the manic tangle of New York’s bridges and New Jersey’s turnpikes, it was a straight shot across Pennsylvania on Interstate 80, my least favorite stretch of American highway. Nothing but Amazon delivery trucks and cops in my headlights. We drove through McDonald’s for lunch. We stopped at a rest area where a man stood on the grass, grinning at the moon. Six hundred miles later, we arrived in the Middle West. I love the full-bodied thrum in my nerves after a long drive, as if the mechanical has merged with the neurochemical.
