Music is my safe drive home

It's 2, 3, 4am and I'm driving myself home along the route I know so well. Warkworth to Campbellford, Campbellford to Warkworth. County Road 29 to Highway 30. I must have travelled it hundreds of times. A passenger, a driver, a child, an adult. The grain silos, the house with the moose painted on one wall, the flea market, the golf course. I don't even pay them any attention now. Each curve and rise and fall of the road could be my own body.

Then one night, it snows.

A lot.

Nothing has changed, the route is the same, but now I fight to concentrate as the smallest drops and flakes compete for my limited attention. All I want to do is get home but I can only see the road directly in front of me and it's impossible to tell where the road ends and the shoulder (or ditch) begins. I'm quite certain I know what each rotation of the wheels will bring but the change in the weather is making me doubt my instincts.

I keep my eyes wide. I don't want to miss the warm and hazy orange glow that resides in the sky above the Warkworth Penitentiary. It means I'm halfway there. The traction control is supposed to help me. If one wheel is spinning out of control it keeps the other three gripping for stability. But the stabilizing pulls me in different directions and I don't want to move forward. I just want to stop. Take a break. Take a breath.

So I listen to music. I turn the volume up and I drive. The familiar synth lines of Depeche Mode will ease my anxiety. The pounding melodies and falsetto screams of Muse will energize me. Never underestimate the power of a well-constructed playlist.

Music is my temple.

Music is my drug fix. 

Music is my safe drive home...