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| VIEW FROM THE HILL |Getting Inside the University of the RoadBy Jim Ellefson, associate professor of EnglishThe Dean’s the high-miles bicycle man with the darksplotches on his wings—and a grin that hasroamed the American west from water holeto water hole in search of some job that doesn’tshorten his leash between dinner and breakfast.Or the Dean’s the blissful hog-eyed womanon the bus with the tan-bark face, carrying herlife in the paper sack on her lap, or the littlegirl playing in the sage brush with her yellowworld dog, three stars, rising moon and a deepblue sky. You have to ask them if they’llteach you. You have to ask them if you canwake up in the freezing night in the middleof the desert and listen to wheel musicrise and fall along the loneliesthighway in America—or ask themwhy the waitress in Nowhere, Nevada callseverybody “Honey,” and why itjingles the change in your pockets, and putsanother hum into your wheels alonghundreds of miles of pitifully obliviousdark road. Or just get personal. Ask themAfter outdoor adventures like the one picturedPhotograph by Paul Hansenif the road signs lie, or if you will everarrive wherever it is you’re going, or ifthe going will always be good—praiseGod, the Mother, and all the roaming angels.Be sure to get personal and praise allthe roaming angels—as if this time they’ll let youin, this time you’ll get there—roll rightthrough a wide door into a frenzy of blackgowns, tubas, violins, mortar board hats, everybodyshouting, “Oh Yeah!” Praise them so you canbecome the sweet solemn-eyed old man, tremblingfingers on the steering wheel in the greatestof anticipations—the sweet solemn-eyedold man whose face fractures into a grinwhenever anyone says, “It’s time to go.”here, students in Professor Jim Ellefson’s classwrite in their daily journals about the experienceand followup in class, connecting the experiencesto the naturalists they’ve been reading, includingEmerson and Thoreau.Champlain View | Spring 20047