Highway 105 Therapy

I have a tendency to dance while I'm washing my dishes. I must look pretty ridiculous to the neighbours, bopping all over the place in front of the window, but I don't care. I don't even care when they hear me belting out an Aretha Franklin tune. It's nice to be at a point in my life where I really just don't give a damn care what others think. So, I was listening to a song by Greg Brown and I stopped washing the dishes and smiled. I was reflecting on a trip I recently made with my mom down the 105.

If you've ever driven to Red Lake, then you know exactly what the 105 is, because you have to be truly alert and conscientious when driving down this swervy, windy, animal-riddled obstacle course, teaming with maniac semi-drivers and convoys of boat-lugging tourists. Highway 105 is the road that you must take once getting off the Trans-Canada. It leads you right to "the end of the road" and to what has been called, "the most northern stop lights in Ontario" but I don't know if that's really true. I don't even really know where I heard that, but I have a tendency to tell people that. Maybe I've just become really good at believing my own little boastful white lie because it sounds both ridiculous and intriguing at the same time. So, anyone that has driven down the 105 knows that you don't really stop down this stretch of road unless you go to the Pit Stop or Smitty's in Ear Falls to get coffee, or take a pee, or both. Then you usually don't stop again until Vermilion Bay. That trip is a good two hours, and a lot of conversation can be had during that time.

Over the years, I have heard several women say that when they need to "have it out" with their husbands, that they just wait for a trip down the 105 because there is absolutely nowhere they can go once the driving starts. Their husband is stuck, listening to their wife give her perspective on things for those two hours. He stops in Ear Falls for a coffee and a pee and wonders if it's easier to just turn around and go back home or whether it's really worth it to just make it to the end of the 105. I think I may have been in that situation one or two times over the years....talking another's ear off to no avail. *sigh*

But you put two people in a confined space, and add the element of music, and the conversation grows, and ultimately turns in to a therapy session. On my most recent road trip, my mom and I were listening to a song by Greg Brown called, "The Cheapest Kind" where Brown talks about how their family may have been poor in material goods, but "the love, the love, the love, it was not the cheapest kind. It was rich as, rich as, rich as, any you could ever find." It brought us both back, simultaneously, to our own childhoods and memories, our connections, our families and our resolved conflicts. It opened a floodgate of tears and laughter and conversation that has been put into that capsule of time and space and can easily be reflected on any time I hear that song.

And that has happened a million times, and I may only be stretching the truth a little bit when I say that I've been up and down the 105 a million times. As a child, it was to go on sports trips. As a teenager, it was wild escapes to the city with friends and my boyfriend. As a university student, it was to come home for some TLC and as an adult, to go on medical trips, holidays, city shopping sprees, festivals, work related seminars, and the like. But you know, regardless of who I go with, the trip always starts with some good music, and then it transforms some how, and suddenly the conversation gets intimately personal; close in a way that is undefineable, really. I could be sitting in my kitchen with that same person over a cup of coffee and would not have the same conversation. Does the intimacy of the conversation occur because of the risk that is taken in just driving down the 105? Do we somehow feel a need to "confess" our desires and secrets? Is it because we are looking straight ahead at the road, making it easier to discuss topics that may be considered taboo if looking each other in the eye? Is it because we are enclosed in a small space and having confessional flashbacks? Is it because we finally have an opportunity to sit back and talk about ourselves for two hours instead of worrying about everyone else all the time?

Whatever the case may be, I have unleashed some awfully strong secrets in the confines of a vehicle on the 105, along with my roadie partners. And you know, that is where the conversation stays. It really does. That highway will do that to you, and that's not such a bad thing. Releasing pent up gobbly goop that is collecting dust in the file folders of our brains is always a good thing. So the next time you're considering a day trip to Dryden for some shopping, you may want to consider your company, because if my theory stands correct, you're going to be telling them something you didn't expect to ever share with a soul. Bring a box of tissue.