state line

It's amazing the little details you can remember. Crossing the state line in my beat up stationwagon, realizing I'd made a wrong turn, driving there just once, and I remember it perfectly. Little things, little details--"let's get gas here," and then it's walking and looking at this place I'd only been to for ten minutes before, like it's my childhood home. Memories flooding back.

When I was a kid I always imagined the state line was something real, like you could actually see it--and I remember her hand pointing at this row of lights, the only night we were there. "That's the state line." And it was. That was that little stretch of road in Idaho I'd driven down before I realized I'd made a wrong turn. It wasn't far from the weird triangular intersection on the highway, which wasn't far from the little remote cul-de-sac where she lived.

That was years ago, before I took my pilgrimage back, driving a new car, wearing new clothes, older, wiser. Before I went back I found a place where I could see that little row of lights, where she'd first shown me something I thought I'd only imagined.