That Empty Feeling

I remember driving the freeways around Central Ohio and feeling absolutely hollow. I was young, in my early twenties, and sometimes drove the freeway for fun. It was a novelty in my life. We didn't have freeways where I came from. We had highways, which turned into main streets. I grew up on one of those main streets. I could wait patiently for all the semi-trucks and traffic to stop at the red light a half a block away and then I could run across the street and climb up the hill. My childhood home faced that hillside, which I took for granted all the years I lived in my hometown. I looked out the front windows and saw the slanted earth rising. I lived at the base, and there was always something to see when I looked up.

I drove the freeways in Central Ohio and felt the hollow feeling and looked out my windshield and saw the flat earth stretching. It took a few months for the novelty to wear off, and then I was terrified. It wasn't the freeway that scared me. In theory, freeways are supposed to connect people to places. Period. Instead, I felt completely isolated every time I found myself on one. I felt empty. I was too young to understand why.

It wasn't ten years later, but almost, when I was driving in Southern California, on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was near the base of the Hollywood Hills when it occurred to me that I didn't feel empty when I was driving in LA. I didn't drive the freeways often, but even then, I didn't look out my windshield and feel as flat and empty as the landscape beyond me. I remember writing to my friend and saying, "I don't feel that empty feeling here that I felt in Central Ohio." I still didn't see it. And I wouldn't until I was back home in the hills of Southern Ohio for a while.

Whether it was a car window or a room window or standing outside in the middle of the road, I could look in any direction and see hillside. It filled every view. And it filled me.

We are products of our environments, and that isn't limited to just our family's influence. We are products of the landscape in which we were raised. The land is as much a part of who we become as the customs and comforts of our heritage. When confronted with flatness, I feel its void. I need hills to hug me, to offer their sides to climb, to present the views from their summits.