Squinting into the Sunset

Why Heading West isn’t the Best
 

- Mike Ferrentino

THE DRIVE HOMEWARD FROM BIBLE CAMP THIS YEAR WAS A solid week spent cleaving westward. Long days behind the wheel would end with brief rides near the end of each day, shaking out the potential deep vein thrombosis with a sampling of dirt from Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and finally the home dirt of California. Every day would start with coffee and NPR, van wheels moaning on asphalt as they picked up speed, vectoring almost constantly straight west. Radio stations fade out, podcasts get plugged in, then playlists, then back to the radio scanning for signs of life between the static and the dominant clarity of Christian radio. At some point in each late afternoon, body stiff from another 500 miles spent sitting in one position, sun-glassed eyes fighting through tinted lenses and a bug-smeared windshield to identify a horizon being consumed by a featureless, violent orange fireball, the westward push would feel like punishment by fire, and it would be time to stop driving. Sanity preserved, Visine administered, live to repeat tomorrow.

Once upon a time, this west into the sunset thing was a common movie-ending trope. The hero, having beaten all odds and resolved the pivotal cinematic crisis, would aim himself west and dissolve into the setting sun. While this might have been a good cliché in order to tie the room together enough to roll credits, it just never made any sense to me. The whole notion of riding off into the sunset is messed up.