Letter No. 16: Just Orange

The flash of orange showed up miles before anything actually changed. Against the muted colors of late-summer grass, it was almost impossible not to notice.

Orange cones stood along the shoulder, one after another, stretching farther ahead than I could see. Nothing appeared to be wrong with the road. The pavement beneath me was still smooth. Both lanes were open, but the speed limit had already dropped and traffic had slowed with it. There were no workers, no equipment, no torn-up asphalt—nothing I could see that explained why dozens of us were now moving considerably slower than we had been a few miles earlier.

Just orange.

I have never been particularly patient with construction zones. They seem to begin miles before anyone is actually doing anything. Speed limits fall. Lanes narrow. Cars and trucks begin bunching together. Somewhere ahead, according to the signs, important work is taking place, although I can drive for miles without seeing a single person working on the road.

That day was no different. The dry grass continued rolling past the windows while the orange kept pace beside us. Eventually, a sign appeared: RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD. A little farther on, an electronic board flashed another instruction: MERGE LEFT.

Now the warning began closing lanes.

Turn signals appeared. Vehicles that had been traveling independently suddenly had to account for one another. Some drivers moved over early. Others stayed in the disappearing lane longer. A space opened in front of one vehicle and closed behind another. Brake lights flickered red. Dozens of us began reorganizing ourselves around something we still could not see.

That interested me.

We were being asked to alter our speed, position, and expectations because of work happening somewhere beyond our view. Most of us had no idea what that work was. We simply had the warning and the instructions that followed it.

Eventually the road narrowed to one lane, and everything slowed even more. This is usually the point where my internal commentary begins.

Why is the construction zone this long? Where is everybody? What exactly are they doing?

I can become surprisingly certain that a road project is poorly organized despite knowing almost nothing about it.

Perhaps that is because delay feels different when the reason for it is visible. If I see a bridge deck torn apart, slowing down makes sense. If heavy equipment is sitting in the roadway, I understand immediately why I cannot continue at my normal pace. But when the pavement looks perfectly usable and there is no one working anywhere I can see, the restriction feels different.

The warning is visible. The work is not.

There was something about being asked to respond before I understood why that stayed with me.

Sometimes we can clearly see what is changing us. A loss arrives. A new responsibility is handed to us. A relationship begins or ends. A decision has to be made. We understand, at least in part, why life suddenly feels different.

Other times, the first thing we notice is simply that we can no longer travel the way we had been traveling.

Something slows us down. A familiar lane closes. We have to make room for someone else. We wait longer than we expected. We find ourselves moving in a direction we did not choose, and whatever is happening seems to extend much farther than necessary.

We see the warning before we see the work. Perhaps some formation happens there—in the space between the warning and the explanation.

Long before I could see anyone repairing the highway, the construction zone had already changed the way I was driving. I was watching farther ahead. I was paying closer attention to the vehicles beside me. I had taken my foot off the accelerator. I was leaving more room. Dozens of strangers who had nothing in common except the same stretch of road were adjusting to one another because something ahead required us to travel differently.

The work itself might have been pavement repair, a culvert replacement, bridge work, or something beneath the road I would never know existed. Whatever it was, I realized there was a good chance I would drive this same stretch of interstate sometime in the future and never think about it again.

That may be one of the peculiar things about road construction. When the work is finished, much of the evidence disappears. The cones are collected. The electronic signs are hauled away. The temporary speed limits come down. Both lanes reopen, and we accelerate across whatever was repaired without giving it another thought.

The inconvenience disappears with the evidence of the work.

Maybe some of the most important work in us happens that way too.

There are seasons we remember mostly for the slowing, the narrowing, the waiting, or the unexpected merge. At the time, we may not understand what any of it is accomplishing. We only know that life has asked us to travel differently for a while.

And then, somewhere down the road, the orange disappears.

We begin moving freely again, perhaps without noticing that the slower miles taught us to watch farther ahead, leave more room, and become less certain that nothing is happening simply because we cannot see the work.

Long before the road changes, the warning has already changed the way we travel.

Until next Sunday…

George

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