5-12-21 by Carol Baxter

The road between my hometown and the next “big” town winds through a 500-foot elevation change with cliffs on one side that, while not straight down, will kill you just the same if you and the oncoming drivers are not each paying attention. The bridge over what we call a river and anyone from the American South would call a creek has two potholes that need repeated filling and is the narrow point of the drive, the one that makes you cross the yellow line if nobody is opposing you and grip the steering wheel tighter and stay on your side if they are. Guardrails are not a thing except in places near the big town that make you scratch your head, why rails here when not there?

Some years ago, I contemplated what freefalling off the cliff would feel like followed immediately by the thought it was time to change jobs. I quit that day.

I have friends who absolutely will not visit me at night because in addition to the two-ton-plus vehicles with possibly inebriated drivers, elk, deer, racoons, javelinas, and foxes are free to cross the highway or stand in the middle and stare into the headlights. Those same friends will visit in the daylight because a rabbit, squirrel, or fat tarantula looking for his mate are relatively easy on the tires. Having experienced a couple of motorcycle accidents in Greater Los Angeles commuter traffic this winding road does not make my scary list.

From dawn to dusk the drive is quite lovely. During the summer and closer to 5,000 feet, the fiery blossoms of Century Plants will make you want to pick up a paintbrush. Ponderosa pines frame the highway with a few cottonwoods thrown in for good measure where the Verde River meanders. I have pulled over just to gaze at the mountains and valleys or to snap a picture of black forest green trees silhouetted against an Arizona sunset or snow on the Mogollon Rim.

There are a few dead-end dirt roads leading off the asphalt leaving no choice but to drive it with care to a destination at either end, a consistency to which I have become accustomed in the past 15 years or so. I can tell when a driver has blinked, thought Payson was bigger and hopes for a place to turn around that doesn’t exist for a few miles.

vacationers wouldn’t have reason to notice but two ADOT signs warn local drivers that two miles of Twilight Zone exist between Payson and Pine. It is 17 miles northbound and 15 miles southbound. Ye who do not believe in magic or hold as fact that the universe contains no aliens will tell me that the measurement is between town limits and post offices or some such rationalization, but I can feel the two miles of surreal landscape in my bones, and it is never in quite the same place.

When I am driving alone within that two-mile stretch I try to shed my grief at the too-soon deaths of loved ones, I scream out my frustrations, the world recedes and I am at peace, or the fictional characters in my head speak in voices calm and clear.

I like driving alone. I get motion sick less far less often. No self-driving cars for me thank you. I saw a commercial for one where the lone occupant was reading a book while sitting with her back to the direction the car was traveling. Horror.

Yes, it is about control on roads well-traveled and those leading into, dare I say it, the zone Rod Serling made famous.