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Hey Seq-ers, Maddie here. I…did not want to get behind the wheel of a car. I remember taking my driving permit test as a teenager, feeling like I hadn’t studied the packet enough when I was thrust into a room full of strangers and given a multiple-choice test. After hours of waiting at the DMV, there’s no question I was relieved to pass — but the thought of actually driving was still somewhat abstract. My experience taking drivers ed in Manhattan was, predictably, terrifying. I remember once explaining to a maybe slightly whiplashed instructor named Mr. Torres that I had slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a bird in the road. Cut to not quite a decade later, and I am once again in a DMV taking a permitting test. I had somehow been allowed to renew my permit following moves to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York again with only a few sideways glances. But come to find out, permits are non-transferable to Hawaiʻi! So here I was next to a Costco, trying to remember what the sign that looked like a line next to a tree getting hit by lightning meant (lane ending, merge left. I got that one wrong.) “Driving is the most dangerous thing we do on a daily basis.” If you know me interpersonally, I have probably said this to you. And I stand by this! But I also had to look it up to see if I was actually correct. The leading 10 causes of death in the U.S. aren’t exactly conditions you make a life-or-death choice about on a daily basis, besides “unintentional injuries” and COVID-19. And between ages 5 and 44, unintentional injury is the leading cause of death. And per the National Center for Health Statistics (2023 data, so we can still trust it), motor vehicle deaths were the 3rd-largest group of unintentional deaths, behind falls and poisoning. So, to fact-check myself, the most dangerous things we do on a daily basis are eating, drinking, and climbing stairs(?) But driving is definitely up there. But I digress! This is an essay about me learning to love driving. Or at least not fear it with every fiber of my being. As banal as it sounds, all it really took for me to get over a deathly fear of driving was to be inconvenienced by not driving. I grew up in the middle of a huge city that is objectively walkable and well-supported by public transit (I’m looking at you, M14D select bus service). In Hawaiʻi, I just moved to be slightly farther away from everything. When I realized I could get an extra 5-10 minutes of sleep in the morning by driving to work, that about sealed the deal. And sure, the first handful of times I drove were stressful as hell. Part of the process, I’m realizing, is figuring out which stimuli you need to focus on and which are extraneous — which beeps and flashes in your periphery are critical, and which are metaphorical birds in the road that you need to ignore. I still haven’t driven on the expressway, and I do get nervous going far outside my usual one-mile radius. But if there’s hope for this recently licensed New Yorker, there’s hope for us all.* And if you hate how car-pilled this essay has been, might I suggest Max’s marvelous Q&A with renegade guerilla subway heat dude Jack Klein? And check out these wonderful responses we got to our prompt last newsletter about connecting with nature! I’m going to throw out the opposite as a question for the room: What do you think about when you’re driving? How do you connect with the road? Drop me a line at hello@sequencermag.com. Driving off into the distance…. Maddie *I also need to thank my driving instructor in Honolulu, Princess. She was the best. And if you know me IRL, ask me about my driving test. I have THOUGHTS. “This spring I got a free pollinator garden installed, shout-out to local group DC Natives. Watching it develop and seeing it nurture all kinds of pollinators has been cathartic. I especially like watching the monarchs swoop in and out while drinking my morning coffee. Tending this garden gives me a small feeling of agency against the multi-front destruction in the world today. This garden makes a difference in a very small and localized way.” “I’ve been doing a lot more connecting with nature since I moved to the mountains this year. As is the case for many mountain towns, Grenoble, France draws a lot of hardcore, outdoor-sports enthusiasts. I do love to spend time doing nature sports, but it remains to be seen whether I pick up alpinism and ski touring. And for me so far, trail running has mostly been pushing through pain, wondering why I didn’t just go for a hike. I don’t feel as connected with nature when I’m there with an objective in mind. The focus draws inward and there’s not the kind of boundary-blending that happens when you immerse yourself in the natural world. I’m too self-aware when I have one eye on the clock. I’d rather go outside and just forget about time. I recognize that the ability to spend long hours, even days and weeks at a time outside is an enormous privilege. One I credit to the generous vacation time granted to employees in France. Privilege has long been associated with what we call the “outdoors”, since the Wandervogel of Romantic-era Germanic regions. I always imagine these young men and women from the newly burgeoning bourgeois class becoming bored with city life and taking to the hills, wondering how far they could wander. Today, outdoor equipment is a huge investment, and a big barrier to entry. And there’s always the question of time. Of course, dramatic alpine landscapes are amazing, but I’m trying to be intentional about noticing the everyday natural wonders, like golden hour light through mid-summer foliage or the shimmer of river rapids flowing through the city. In noticing these things, I hope, just for a moment, to be taken out of time. I think I’d rather speak of being “immersed” in nature rather than connecting with it. After all, humans are just one part of it. Oh, and another thing – it’s cliché at this point, but no matter the price of entry to experience the outdoors, it’s still got to cost less than therapy.”
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