Our theme for the month of October is “states.”
I’ve lived east of the Mississippi my entire life: twenty-five years in Michigan, two years in New Jersey, and now just over two years in Virginia.
For a month in early 2021, though, my spouse and I stayed in a (truly) tiny Airbnb in the (somewhat) tiny town of Page, Arizona. Objectively, this was just a long vacation, but something about clicking the “month-long stays” button on Airbnb’s website—plus the ambient oddness of the Covid era—made it feel more like “living.”
Bethany and I had just gotten married in the summer of 2020, but the pandemic had derailed our plans to move to New Jersey immediately. We lived with some generous friends in Grand Rapids that fall, but as spring approached we realized that we 1) had fully remote jobs/responsibilities, 2) desperately needed to see the sun, and 3) could get an Airbnb for a month for less than the cost of rent.
We packed up our tiny Honda Civic, rounded the corner of Lake Michigan, and headed for our first destination: Oakley, Kansas. On the way, we started listening to Taylor Swift’s complete discography with the intent to rank every song. As Bethany slept in the passenger seat, I listened to several podcasters’ reactions to the Capitol insurrection, which had happened the day before we left. When it was Bethany’s turn to drive, I wrote about it. I remember thinking that Nebraska’s landscape had been underrated, while western Illinois was the most boring place on earth. I remember thinking maybe boring wasn’t so bad.
I think we spent less than seven hours total in Oakley (apparently not named for Annie), because we had a fourteen-hour drive ahead of us to Page. And for my midwestern self who’d only ever visited the west by plane, it was a magical drive. In Eastern Colorado, we passed towns like Sugar City and Rocky Ford and wondered what it’d be like to live in the continent’s empty middle. We both got headaches from the altitude crossing into the San Luis Valley, but we’d recovered in time to enjoy the stunning views near Pagosa Springs.
We kept going west and spent about forty-two seconds in New Mexico before crossing into Arizona. It was dark by now, so enjoying the landscape was going to have to wait. Instead, we listened to more Taylor Swift and took in the spooky emptiness of the road.
When we got to Page, the driving didn’t stop. We spent some days working our remote jobs, but at least twice a week we made a major day trip: three hours north to Bryce Canyon National Park, two hours northwest to Zion, four hours southeast to Petrified Forest. The Grand Canyon should’ve been two and a half hours away, but the west entrance was closed due to the pandemic, which added another hour.
The park visits were, of course, incredible. In less than a month, I went from a skeptic of the outdoors to a relatively confident hiker, and Bethany and I both felt our stress levels drop as we let rocks and mountains and forests surround us. I sent dozens of photos to my grandparents’ electronic photo frame.
But I almost feel more nostalgia for the drives than for the destinations. On a hiking day, I’d wake up at 5:30 to make us coffee (pictured above), then we’d spend hours on the road, watching the sun slowly rise above the desert (an experience better described by music than words). One day, a dusting of snow covered the canyons and valleys like pixie dust. I discovered some new podcasts, letting my mind wander while my nervous system adjusted to going 70 on a two-lane road.
We learned that Flagstaff is basically Narnia: it can be a blizzard there while it’s 60 degrees three miles away. We learned that the Honda Civic’s gas gauge couldn’t be trusted while driving uphill. And we learned that this whole area, from Bryce down to the Grand Canyon, was part of the Grand Staircase, a geological phenomenon I still can’t picture despite rereading the Wikipedia page about it a dozen times.
On the days we didn’t drive, we walked the trail that encircles the town, learning the local landmarks: Tower Butte, Lake Powell, the now-defunct power plant. But we learned only what two tourists could learn in a month during a pandemic. We didn’t meet anyone besides the building manager, and we didn’t really live there. I couldn’t tell you now how to get from the Airbnb to the Safeway, a drive I did at least ten times.
But I won’t forget the road to Page, and the roads beyond Page, and the roads back from Page. In a year of chaos and uncertainty that got worse before it got better, those roads were another world.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
