Night Riders of the Mother Road

I chose to interpret the Springfield 66 Centennial Sculpture Series design call from the perspective of a traveler at night. Some of my core memories are of road trips and the animals I’d encounter along the way. Bullfrogs croaking loudly while we camped near the lake in the summer. Lunar moths the size of our palms pausing to perch on a strand of chili lights hung from the retractable awning of an old motor home. Nocturnal by nature, a possum could be most often spotted by the nighttime road tripper. The luckiest of us might see a passel of them clinging to their mother as she plodded across the fill station parking lot, the neon green of a Sinclair Dino gas pump illuminating her path. Travelers of the Mother Road know these creatures well. The trill of the katydid and the glow of the firefly. The paw print of a raccoon left in the dust on the hood of the car, making its way while we slept.