The last time I saw a tumbleweed

The last time I saw a tumbleweed, I was driving in my car across the desert, everything I own in the back, starting an adventure--leaving the relative safety and comfort (or at least familiarity) of LA and off to my post-doc in Madison, WI. I drove the Route 66 route, but on the interstates, because, with everything you own in the back seat, who needs to increase the mileage of the trip by at least three times what it needs to be? So I missed all the road-side attractions and all that. But anyway, shortly after crossing the river into Arizona, there it was, a tumbleweed. Stark, lone, and cliché. Tumbling across the highway and on to destiny.

Well, no such symbolism this morning. On the way in to work this morning, there was a delay at at the Stafford intersection with Pembina highway. A pair of tumbleweeds, or at least roundish dry dead bushy things, was rolling across the roadway, branches locked together in some kind of desperate — no, there was no symbolism. I hadn't had any coffee yet. Anyway, where they came from, I have no idea. They ended up rolling up between some planters outside of a building across the street, and for all I know that's where they'll spend the rest of their days, buried in snow, slowly disintegrating until there's nothing left.

Hey, maybe there's a metaphor in there after all.