Oil prices & the open road

By Mike VanBuren
From the Late October 2013 North Woods Call

   Among the most heartbreaking aspects of escalating energy costs —for me, at least—are the negative impacts that higher gasoline prices have on the average person’s ability to travel.
   This is pretty much a uniquely American worry, I know, and one that presents quite a conundrum for the conservationist in me.
     On one hand, I want to cut pollution and save fossil fuels.  On the other, there is nothing that brings me greater joy and experiential learning than climbing behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and wandering down America’s back roads.  I suppose I could do this on foot, or bicycle, but it wouldn’t be the same.
     Maybe I’m just spoiled by the fleeting opportunities of the past and need to plan less-distant travel in the future.  But that’s not something I can easily accept.  It seems too much like an assault on the personal liberty to which I have grown accustomed.
     As Texas songwriter Billy Joe Shaver so aptly declared: “Movin’ is the closest thing to being free.”
     Right or wrong, this has  been one of the guiding philosophies in my own life, and something ingrained in the America psyche since the nation’s founding and westward movement of the first European settlers.  Gasoline-powered cars and trucks have routinely taken me places I would never have gone and shown me things I would never have seen in any other way.
     Ah, sweet freedom.
     My parents first introduced me to the American road during the summer of 1963 with a journey down Route 66 to Arizona.  From there we drove north to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons, then back to Michigan—all in a tiny turquoise-colored Volkswagen beetle with no air conditioning.
    Ever since that trip, the wonders of two-lane blacktop and the fascinating discoveries one can make along the road have captured my imagination like sticky fly paper.
   It was, of course, a time when gasoline sold for 20 to 30 cents per gallon and you could drive all the way across the country for not much more than it costs now for a single fill-up.  In fact, for much of my adult life—until fairly recently—road trips remained affordable vacation alternatives.
     So down the road I went.  From the dense forests of the Great Lakes region to the Saguaro National Monument in Arizona ...   from Big Sur on the rugged California coast to picturesque Bar Harbor in Maine ... from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies ... from Mt. Ranier in Washington State to the Everglades in the Seminole country of southern Florida ... across the mighty Mississippi, Missouri and Columbia rivers ... from New York City to Los Angeles and Chicago to New Orleans ... and from the border towns of Texas and Mexico to the quiet farm communities of Indiana and Ohio.
  And, sorry to say, I’ve loved every gas-guzzling minute of it.
    At first, I traveled in an old Plymouth Valiant with a slant-six engine.  Then it was a 1967 Rambler Rebel with soft and comfortable reclining seats.  Later, I graduated to a series of Ford pickup trucks and Econoline vans, which made it possible to sleep undisturbed in roadside rest areas and assorted parking lots, thus avoiding the costs of hotels and motels.
     Those were the glory days of cheap travel and nonstop adventure, which fed my writer’s muse like nothing else before or since.
    But now such travel has become a major—and often unaffordable—investment for a penny-pinching adventurer who remembers much less painful visits to the gas pump.
    Jet-setting elites still have affordable options and seem to be traveling as much as ever.  But what  about the common man?  Have we forever lost a treasured piece of liberty we once took for granted?  Will we again see a time when we can take to the highway without breaking the bank?
   Maybe not, but I remain hopeful.  There are still a lot of things I want to see in this great land—things I’m sure to miss if I’m forced by economics, resource concerns, or government bureaucrats to stay at home.
    It’s interesting to note that when cars were first introduced into American cities in significant numbers, they were seen as the solution to an urban pollution problem—horses.  During the latter part of the 19th Century, horses in New York City alone dropped an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million pounds of manure every day—much of it onto the city streets, according to information gleaned from The Henry Ford Museum’s popular exhibit, “The Automobile in American Life.”
    Add to that the urine and remains of animals that died from disease or exhaustion and were often left where they fell, and the nation’s cities were dirty, foul-smelling and fly-ridden places, particularly in hot weather.
   It’s no small wonder many urban residents hailed the coming of “horseless carriages.”
     But with today’s exponential population growth, and millions more cars and trucks on the world’s roadways, we’re once again forced to look for innovative transportation solutions.
    I just hope whatever we come up with will include energy efficient personal vehicles that are affordable to purchase and operate—and useful for long-distance travel, camping, trailer hauling, and all those other traditional automotive activities that modern lightweight and electric-powered cracker boxes so far haven’t been able to handle.
    Of course, that will do little to address other automobile-related troubles such as congestion, urban sprawl, and accidental injury or death.
    To borrow another phrase from Billy Joe Shaver, unfettered travel on the nation’s back roads and interstate highways may be a “low-down freedom” in light of dwindling resources, corporate greed and modern environmental politics, but it’s freedom nonetheless.
     It would unfortunate—at least for those of us who love the road and all it represents—to see such opportunities to roam fade away like yesterday’s horse and buggy.