I love to take long drives with no particular route or destination in mind especially at nights after long days. Something about these night-time journeys calms me--the landscape perhaps--because it appears differently at night as it is transformed into something more mysterious, unique, almost anonymous, for one does not know it as well at night as opposed to when it is fully exposed to broad daylight.

To my mind, the images of the landscape at night are some of the most exquisit. From the distant splash of the Jersey lights bouncing on a stretch of the Hudson River across from New York -- reflecting some of the most interesting shapes and colors the eyes are ever likely to see, to the unexpected smokey trash can one passes on 42nd street, from which a large puff of smoke slowly rise to the air like a cobra in tune with a musical note.

As if that weren't enough, the neon lights nearby casts a thought-provoking image when intermingled with the smoke. Something abstract...something akin to good and evil. The stoplight allows me to observe the scenery from afar a while longer and then I move on along nature's course. People usually seek nature out for solace and peace. How many times have we in wanting to get away from the city, vacationed in places where one could literally hug nature? It is said that even the great poets and many a character in our favorite novels have usually returned to nature to "find himself," so to speak. Perhaps these night drives are calming because one is quite literally at work with nature, albeit negotiating its landscape on wheels.