Are we almost there yet?

I've never been one of those children who asked the proverbial question on a road trip. I was the child who quietly lost myself in my own imagination and tuned out everyone around me or searched for wildlife in the fields and woods which our car would zoom past.

 Once in my childhood, I was travelling with my father and patchwork family of his design. We were like a car of clowns- crammed upon one another in some sort of too small foreign economy car. As our clown car whizzed down the highway, we were adjacent to the Ohio River. It was deep, strong, and nearly one mile wide. I spotted an imposing set of antlers bobbing up and down in the swollen surge.

Because we were travelling on a straight stretch of road which reached out for six or seven miles, I watched the huge deer struggle to traverse the great river. I craned my head around and pleaded silently for the deer to swim faster or the car to move slower. I wanted so badly to see how the mini-drama would end. I hoped the deer would wash up. Just before I lost sight of him, I think his feet found the sandy river bottom and he gripped to life. I'm just sure that he did.

Other times, I would spy red tailed hawks perched in small trees alongside the Interstate highway. The trees seemed too small or the hawks seemed too large but they often sat beside the road, perhaps letting the automobiles do their hunting. While the other children would pass the time singing songs, squabbling, or playing games, I was a master at tuning out everyone else in the car.

I'm not so sure if it was as much tuning out or tuning in to what was around me in the world. I could spend an afternoon watching a spider sculptor create his masterpiece or get lost in watching my pet dog circle before he lay down.

So, if you were talking to me and I pretended not to hear you, I was probably just contemplating the struggles of a species different than our own. And wondering, are we almost there yet?