[Creative Nonfiction] Over That Hill

Read the winning entry for our week of November 16 contest, The Pathless Path.

Over That Hill
By Tawnya Gibson

On Sunday drives growing up my mom was often heard muttering, “I wonder what’s over that next hill” even though she had lived her entire life within a two-hour radius of where I was born. One of the more distinct memories from childhood, we’d pile in the station wagon and, later, our silver Mercury when so few of us were left at home and we’d start driving.

Sometimes we went toward Cliff, which sounds ominous but really was just the closest town 30 miles away, hugged by a gorgeous winding river. On one of these drives, I remember staying in the car while my mom threw rocks just past a rattlesnake trying to get it to coil so my dad could snap a picture. We all sucked in our breaths as my parents worked together to get the shot my dad was hoping for before hopping back into the car and driving home.

Or we’d head the opposite way, taking us all the way through town and spitting us out on the other end, past junkyards and the red-blinking radio tower my dad would try to pass off as Rudolph during the Christmas season and toward the only bigger city we lived near, but would never end up in.

I couldn’t understand the fascination about driving away from our town only to turn around and head back, hours seemingly wasted. I couldn’t understand driving for the sake of driving with no destination in mind. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t stay home, instead. I couldn’t understand what there was to see, in this place that no one had heard of, and no one thought of coming.

When my husband and I moved back to our college town, a family of our own, it didn’t take long before I needed to get out. Drowning in new motherhood I wanted to escape our tiny home and see what was nearby. Head south, to the city and shop a little or eat somewhere new. Head north past the potato fields and the long-haired cows and the hot springs, having my husband stop the car when I saw the perfect shot of the setting sun or red barn amid the green hay, our child safely watching from the back seat. Camera in hand, I would wander east to the lake and west to the smaller towns, just to get out for a little while - full tank of gas and nothing but thoughts.

I didn’t realize, back then, what these drives were. I didn’t realize they were as needed as my whining about staying home to read was not.

I didn’t realize, then, that ‘I wonder what’s over that next hill’ was my mom’s adventurous spirit trying to find the light after being drowned by poverty and circumstance.

I didn’t realize, then, that escaping our tiny house was a highlight, a need, a lifeline, a break from the monotony of daily life.

I didn’t realize, then, that Sunday drives were simply her salvation.

A Note From Our Guest Judge, Paul Millerd

The end moved me. It captured a feeling most of us can relate to, and something I tried to reclaim as I reinvented my life in my early 30s. It was also unexpected, so I enjoyed the surprise of reading it.

About Tawnya Gibson

Tawnya Gibson is a freelance writer who grew up in the high desert of southwest New Mexico. Her work has appeared in TODAY online, Newsweek, Zibby Mag, Under The Gum Tree, Sky Island Journal, and Blue Mountain Review (among others) and she was a longtime contributor to Utah Public Radio. She currently writes the Substack newsletter, Off The Record and lives and works in the mountains of Northern Utah.

This piece piece was written in response to the prompt The Pathless Path.