Driving expeditiously through the mountains suddenly seemed dangerous to my wife. “You’re going awfully fast,” she said. I checked the speedometer and I was well within the limit.

I don’t like to zip too quickly through that beautiful section of I-40 where North Carolina melds into east Tennessee. The panorama of mountains, with curvy roads and old forests crowding the tarmac merits a pace that allows an appreciative glance.

On this day, with restraining fences guarding against rock slides, encroaching trees, road warning signs, curves racing toward us and big trucks sliding behind me on the right, it seemed we were going faster than we were.

I recalled opposite days in 1974 when the national maximum speed was 55 mph in an effort to conserve energy. We lived in northern New Mexico and driving south to Albuquerque through a featureless landscape at 55 felt like standing still.

No geographic feature came toward us, no tree, no hill, no building. Road signs were rare because there was nothing to announce, no blind curve to warn against, no upcoming attraction. Just a straight ribbon of tarmac and sand minute by agonizingly slow minute.

A featureless landscape makes a journey seem slow. When elements natural or manmade come zipping at you, those landmarks make it seem you’re traveling much faster because you have them to measure your progress against.

School years once were that for us. The year moved in cycles, sometimes scattering about during the summer, but it always gravitated back to center just before Labor Day when the new school year started. School events dictated our calendar: teacher work days, holidays, test days, athletic competitions, performances. Christmas arrived with a sense of relief, tempered by the overhanging dread of first semester finals coming in January.

Then spring semester, Easter, class trips and anticipation of summer vacation.

When the last kid graduated from high school and the dog died, we were empty nesters for sure, no longer having to pretend we were napping on Sunday afternoon. College calendars and laundry drop-off visits kept some semblance of school year cycle going, but faintly.

Now, with the youngest in his 40^th year, the calendar meanders, notable less for school events than for Social Security deposits and planning for winters in Florida.

I asked my dad when he was about 80 if days seemed to drag at that age. He shook his head and said every day flies by faster than the one before it. That puzzled me. Now I realize he had landmarks speeding toward him that I’d not considered: Breakfast, a good bowel movement, lunch at Karen’s, the local diner, cards with friends or the wife, doctor visits, driving a widow to the grocery store, a leadership meeting at Redeemer Lutheran, maybe a call from his daughters or his favorite child, a show on TV and hopefully a good night’s sleep.

 Those aren’t the landmark anticipations of the young whose life careens toward them hard around every corner with ever increasing opportunities and expectations. But they are the elements that mark progress of a life traveling confidently toward a destination of which he is sure.