Epilogue: Circling and Landing

6/27/14, Friday, concluded

As they woke, my niece E. and nephew W. greeted us and swapped bits of travelogue. Thomas and W. went down to the lakeshore, put the canoe in the water, and worked out a rowing scheme based on sharing the one useable paddle to cross the lake.

Almost a month on the road, along with a final 22-hour push had tapped Thomas and me out. He and I both succumbed to the need for sleep and napped in the afternoon. When we woke in the early evening, Elizabeth had arrived from Memphis, her work for the week having just wrapped up. Two thirds of our family was convened–along with in-laws, niece, and nephew. Conversation ranged widely—over our two currently in the Middle East, cinema, aviation, and cars. Familiar and comfortable, the in-laws’ house felt like home, and this was a miniature homecoming.  Yet being at their place was still part of the road trip, and one more leg of 230 miles remained.

6/28/14, Saturday

Thomas, W., and I woke at 6:00 to go on a flying expedition with my father-in-law R. We went to the Gallatin airport, rolled out his four-seat Archer, folded ourselves into the seats, and took off for Shelbyville.  R. belongs to a flying club, which in fair weather hosts a breakfast each Saturday at a circuit of small airports around middle Tennessee. Members fly their own craft to the event for a meal cooked by members who live close by.  In a hangar they serve scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits and sausage gravy, fruit salad, and lots of coffee and juice. At this gathering there were perhaps forty people, and R. seemed to know almost everyone—their lives, families, and aircraft. With a good deal of pride, he introduced Thomas and W. to several of these folks.  And he spoke of his other grandchildren.  “You remember my granddaughter who did her pilot training a couple of summers ago? This is her daddy,” he said finally, gesturing at me.

A veteran pilot in Vietnam, long-time C-130 pilot for the Tennessee Air National Guard, corporate pilot, and recreational flyer, R. loves flying and aviation. He is in the air whenever weather and schedules permit. About three years ago he and another flyer in Nashville embarked on building a Zodiac CH 650 from a kit. Over many months, the two-seat fuselage, two wings, and a reconditioned engine took shape in his basement. When these components were ready for assembly, they took them to a hangar at Gallatin and bolted wings and engine to airframe, connected cables, clamped in tubing, and secured wiring. Without fanfare, one day last year his associate posted a You-Tube video of R. taxiing around the runway. In a few more months, again without fanfare, we got an email from him saying he had flown the plane. Since then he and his associate have flown the “experimental plane” over fifty hours, the minimum time they must operate it in the air before taking passengers.

We walked the tarmac and saw planes single-seat to six-seat, factory-made to home-made, and 1938 vintage to 2013. One of the most surprising flying machines was a gyro-plane, which was wingless but had a large passive rotor on top reminiscent of that for a helicopter.  As the plane taxied under the power of a horizontal-axis propellor the rotor caught the wind and turned, providing lift.  All these folks (mostly men, truth be told) shared the sheer joy of being aloft, of being around others who enjoy flight, and of maintaining or building airborne conveyances.  The concentration of satisfaction was palpable.

On the way back my nephew sat in the “shotgun” seat, and once we were at a cruising altitude of about three thousand feet, my father-in-law said, “OK, W., I’m handing the controls over to you. For the moment, just pick a point out on the horizon and fly toward it.”

The color drained from my face, but I stayed quiet, confident that if my nephew made some sudden motion with the yoke or pedals that my father-in-law was there to right the plane. He flew us fairly steadily, but I sensed what the altimeter corroborated: we were climbing. I’ve heard about stalling an aircraft with a steep climb, and that unfortunate image was on my mind. R. said, “Push in on your yoke a little,” and W. brought us back down. We climbed again, and once more R. had W. bring us back down. In a few more minutes, my father-in-law said, “I saw that rain earlier, and I thought we might have to fly through this little storm…”

I looked at Thomas beside me, and his jaw was tense. I looked at my knuckles, and they were white. Then a small heave to the left and a steadier motion of the small plane told me R. had taken back the controls and was entering an approach pattern for the Gallatin airport.

Three thousand feet the air, everything on the ground is visible—at least when it’s clear—and yet identifying specific landmarks is surprisingly difficult. R. was turning the plane for a landing from the north, he said, but I did not immediately see the landing strip. As we were in a steep turn, I had to look “up” to see it. When he let off the throttle and we descended more rapidly. “There are five lights in a row beside the runway. When we’re approaching at the right glide slope, two of them will appear white and three will appear red,” R. said.

I found the lights and saw all white. Then one turned red, and then another, and then another. They stabilized, and in a few more seconds we touched down. I breathed deeply and was very grateful—for good company, a great breakfast, and terra firma under my feet. R asked if we were interested in going up in the Zodiac. Son and nephew were game, but clouds, rain, and wind were moving in, so that put an end to flying for the day.

6/29/14, Sun

R. took Thomas and W. for a flight in the Zodiac, but the air was rough enough to elicit airsickness for the boys.

Charlotte sipped more half-and-half and ate patties of dog food. She was still very weak and had to be led out to the yard.   Blind and deaf, she responded only to her back being rubbed and gentle tugs on her collar. She had stumbled on the steps to the back porch and abraded her left elbow, so Elizabeth and I cleaned and wrapped it with gauze for the extended time Charlotte was lying down.

I told my in-laws I would have to leave Monday to tend to several pieces of business I’d left hanging at the beginning of June. During the week Elizabeth would be in charge of tending Charlotte, and at the end of the week when I came back to pick up Thomas, we would re-evaluate.

6/30/14, Monday

I set out for a solo distance drive, an undertaking I’ve not made in over a month. While I would be in Birmingham, Thomas would stay at the grandparents’ with his cousin for the week, and then I would pick him up the weekend of the Fourth of July.

I listened to a few podcasts on my I-pod, but then the battery died. Then I attempted to listen to the radio, but I was NPR-ed out, as well as country-ed, pop-ed, and oldies-ed out. As the car rolled southward on I-65, so my outlook went south as well.

Leave-taking is difficult, but returning home is even harder. Job, family, house, and personal sense of responsibility all have their claims until you hit the road to leave home. Four weeks ago, the first afternoon of Thomas’ and my road trip, I had already entered the world of the highway. When we had been out about three days—somewhere in Texas—I was completely in the mode and felt I could continue indefinitely. Now, driving back to Birmingham, I wondered about the house sitter and whether she’d tended everything. The prospect of resuming work on the deck was daunting—railings remained to be completed, and that would require a lot of endurance, balance, flexibility, and perseverance in the heat and humidity. I would be working alone, and the progress would be about one fourth the rate as when someone else helped.

In the morning I had called my doctor to make an appointment with a specialist about a painful and worrisome condition that had persisted for several days and that I thought might be the beginning of something serious. Anxiety over it had begun to cloud my days. Though the scheduling nurse had said the earliest the doctor could see me was Thursday, I was formulating a plan to call her again in the morning and ask that they move me up if they had a cancellation.

My driver’s license had expired on the 28^th, and while Alabama has a grace period in which it can be renewed, I was not certain Tennessee would honor that, so I was especially careful not to do anything on the road that might require a THP—or AHP for that matter—representative to look at it. I was dreading the renewal process, because I had heard in the wake of the Jefferson County bankruptcy, people stood for hours in line at the courthouse and satellite offices. But it had to be done.

When I returned, the house was fine, though there was evidence I would have to deal with a rodent problem. I had lots of dirty laundry from the trip. The fridge was clean but empty. In the back yard the carpentry project cried out for completion. Virginia creeper, weeds, privet sprouts, and honeysuckle had invaded fence lines and would require pulling and cutting. My desk was strewn with the same heterogeneous papers as when I’d left. The postman had delivered a crate of accumulated mail at the back door, and it probably contained an overdue bill. As I was the sole occupant of the house for the next few days, every bit of action and attention had to come from me alone. Hunter S. Thompson’s titular phrase fear and loathing described my state of mind, and I sat in a chair for a long time with my face in my hands.

As I pondered all I faced, I realized this death by a thousand cuts was the time- and space-distributed equivalent of a collision with a buffalo. Each by itself is a micro-disaster, and integrated over spatial and temporal coordinates, these loathsome, inconvenient things can sum up to a macro-disaster such as a stroke or automobile accident. If I took all the terror and loss tied up in that moment of contact between 2000-lb beast and 12-year-old car with payload, and I broke it up into little bits and inserted the bits into various facets of, say, a fortnight’s worth of ordinary suburban life, then the net result might look something like what I was facing on this return. Or equivalently, if I took the two-weeks’ worth of vicissitudes, any one of which without attention could metastasize to something bad, and I somehow bundled and synchronized them all to occur at once, then I might have the equivalent of a major trauma.

The atmosphere is continually bombarded by rocks from space, and the vast majority burn up as meteors. Occasionally one makes it all the way to the ground, becomes a meteorite, and frightens Russians or come through the roof of a house in Sylacauga. Economists talk about a risk-free rate of return on an investment but hasten to say that no such thing actually exists.  One of my former colleagues was fond of saying, with an ironic grin, “You know, there is a 100% correlation between those who have died and those who have lived.”  Imitating a naive user of statistics, he went on to say, “Living causes death….”    The point sinking in on me, and not for the first time in my life, was this:

By living we put ourselves at risk.  Living causes choices, and making no choice is still a choice.  Awareness of a risk is evidence of desire within, and as long as desire exists there is value in life.

I recalled a snippet of a poem set in an anthem—perhaps by the medieval mystic Hadewijch of Antewerp—expressing gratitude for desire itself.  From her verse I glean something fundamental, that wanting in and of itself is the nub of life and that physical and spiritual converge in it.

My inner voice was talking to me now:  Stalling or being paralyzed by the unpleasantness or sheer number of to-dos is exactly the opposite of what Mary Schmich counseled in her “Sunscreen Speech” in the Chicago Tribune years ago: “Each day do something that scares you.”  Go to the doctor and find out exactly what is going on. Go stand in the damned DMV line and get the new license. Put a sliver of cheese in the trap and set it next to the hole where the vermin go in and out.  Grow a pair, dude. Concentrate on one thing at a time. Finish it and move on to the next.  The road trip never ends.

Crazy, Crossing the Waters

6/26/14, Thursday

At breakfast I had mixed up a bowl of instant oatmeal, put a hard-boiled egg on a paper plate, smeared a toasted bagel with cream cheese, and poured coffee, black, into a Styrofoam cup. Thomas had a similar handful of comestibles, and we saw the last of the five tables in the lobby was being taken by a white-haired man. He looked up at us and said, “Come on over!” He was in the process of moving from Illinois to Washington state and was towing a large trailer behind his pickup truck. His avocation is powered paragliding. With a small gasoline powered fan strapped to his back and suspended in a harness from a fabric wing, he could take off from a flat piece of open ground on his farm in Illinois. In Washington, he has a few acres and space to continue the sport.

“How far do you think we can get today?” Thomas asked.

I was evasive, “It depends on what you mean by ‘today.’”

His demeanor belied a desire to get back to familiar territory. Thomas said, “Do you think we can get to Nashville?”

“Let’s just drive and see how it goes. We did make a commitment to experience things along the way, not just cover miles,” I said.

Monster Double Dump Truck Yet another in the lineup of machines we’ve seen rolling on the the highways.

Day twenty-four of our journey and day three with the new car had started. Mountains were long gone, flat ground was now the norm, and for the rest of our route we would at most see a few hills. The terrain was green and vegetated, and we would see no more sage brush, prickly pear, or barren ground.

“Did you know,” Thomas began, “that Pierre does not have an interstate going through it?”

“Interesting,” I said. “Why do you think that is?”

This led to a discussion about how capitals are often deliberately built in places away from economic centers.

We passed Winner, Murdo, Presho, and Kennebec. At Chamberlain, we crossed the southward flowing Missouri River, and looking down at the wide flow I imagined Lewis and Clark on their arduous journey in those waters almost 210 years ago. We passed Pukwana, another Mount Vernon (the earlier one was in Texas), and began to see billboards for the Corn Palace at Mitchell. With each mile eastward, the ocean of crops on either side of the road had shifted toward more and more corn. Still early in the season, it was not yet as high as an elephant’s eye.

At Sioux Falls we turned south and passed towns such as Tea and Lennox—hot amber brew in a bone china cup came to mind. I-29 went exactly south for many miles, turning only when we once again approached the Missouri River.

We stopped at a Dairy Queen in Sioux City.  I noticed how much more humid the air was—we were entering the East. Perhaps it was the time of day, the part of town, or the market naturally drawn to DQ, but people seemed softer, paler, more bedraggled than they had seemed in the West. Surely I was reading too much into the surroundings. Though the land was flat, tall vegetation kept the bigger picture hidden, so my perception of the landscape was more restricted than it had been farther west. It seemed that the area near the road was more crowded with steel sheds, houses, and junk machinery.

Thunderstorm in Iowa
A midwestern thunderstorm can be frightening partly because you can see so much of it

As we drove further south, a severe thunderstorm warning came on the radio, indicating high winds and damaging hail in certain Iowa counties—quite a contrast to the Pacific regions where the skies had been cloudless.

We continued south on I-29 in Iowa along the Missouri River, but when we got close to Council Bluffs, we crossed the river into Omaha. It was our first visit to Nebraska. My principal contact with this part of the world is the stream of special offers we get in the mail from Omaha Steaks. The association with cattle came full circle: when we drove from Iowa into Nebraska, I smelled cow manure.

Crossing into Nebraska in a Rain Storm

North 30^th Street is probably not the first place an Omahan would take a newcomer on a tour of the city, but that’s the way we went in. It was a bit like coming into Birmingham from the northeast along First Ave. North or into Memphis from the southeast along Lamar Boulevard. It seems every city of sufficient size and age has sections, usually along a US highway, where a once-thriving ecosystem of retail has been cut off from the rest of the world by interstate highways and has become a heterogeneous mix of abandoned and coarsely repurposed buildings.

Odyssey
Along I-29/80 at the 24th Street overpass stand four startling sculptures depicting settlement and transformation in this midwestern region.

We found our way into a downtown section near the river where warehouses have been converted into apartments and coffee shops and night spots abound. Soul Desires Bookstore provided perhaps the best cup of coffee of the whole trip, and a much-needed restroom.

We listened to the radio more than in most of trip up to this point. Continuing through Iowa, we heard Darius Milaud’s Le Création du Monde, and that got Thomas and me to talking about what influences composers. Milhaud’s prodigious output was shaped by styles and places, especially South America. (Check out the third movement, Brazileira, of his Scaramouche). The radio host’s theme of influence led him to play the film score suite for A Place in the Sun, and Thomas and I had a discussion for several miles about Wagner’s shaping western European music, and how that reverberates through the diasporas surrounding World War II to places such as Hollywood. This screenplay is based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, and the mention of him brought to my mind Sister Carrie, the single most depressing piece of literature I have ever read.

Deserted Highways
At St. Joseph, the roads seemed empty.

Shadowing the Missouri, we entered the eponymous state and continued to St. Joseph. There we crossed the river to Elwood, Kansas to get gas. It was early evening, and the roads and streets were spookily deserted. St. Joseph was for a year and a half the eastern terminus of the Pony Express, which was for that stretch of time the fastest way to move information. The telegraph supplanted it, and the Pony Express went the way of eight-track tapes.

Farther south to Kansas City, darkness began to fall. I began to see billboards that advertised something called Schlitterbahn, which auf Deutsch means “slide way” or “slide course” or “slide.” Then I made out another word, Verrückt, which in German means crazy. A functional umlaut anywhere in America is rare, and I wondered for a moment if I were going nuts. Perhaps I had been somehow transported to the Rhine. But the advertisement was for a water park in Kansas City, and Verrückt was the name of a new attraction, the world’s tallest water slide.

Daylight was giving out, and we raised the question again, would we stop for the night and sleep, or would we take on a straight-through-the-night? An eagerness to be back in familiar circles and resume responsibilities temporarily handed off to others was taking over. Daughter Elizabeth had been in contact with my in-laws  in Nashville, and we had been getting reports both from her and my mother-in-law about our dog Charlotte’s tenuous health. We were ready to take the plunge on this figurative night-time waterslide spanning four states.

A Glimpse of the Ronald Reagan Bridge at St. Louis

From KCMO we headed east to Saint Louis. Stopping for fuel around midnight we found ourselves at a gas station where some sort of interaction between the police and gaggle of cars unfolded. They were indifferent to me though—just a tired-looking white guy pumping regular. We crossed the Mississippi into Illinois and continued southeast. Though we had calculated an arrival in Nashville around 7:00 a.m., we saw a sign for Nashville. It turns out there nineteen municipalities in the US with the same name as the capital of Tennessee, and we were approaching the one in Illinois. We passed Mt. Vernon, Illinois, which brought to mind the town in Texas we visited early on. We passed Marion and Benton, Illinois, eponymous with the towns in Arkansas we passed a few weeks earlier. This eerie recapitulation of other places on our trip drove home the idea that we were literally and figuratively coming full circle.

Rivers used to present enough of a barrier for road travelers that people would to plan trips around where a crossing—by bridge or ferry—existed. Bridges were rare and ferries a wait. Getting from one side to the other was a notable moment in such travels. When I was a kid, my mother would have us play a game of seeing if we could hold our breath while we were bridge-borne over a river or lake. Almost twenty years ago, Kathryn, the girls, and I took the Saltillo Ferry across the Tennessee River in Hardin County, and the excitement of those few moments of being afloat with a car is still palpable. In Thomas’ and my road-trip coda, in one twenty-two hour period, we crossed the Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers. Planning the route from South Dakota to Tennessee involved no consideration of waterway crossings, and it didn’t occur to either of us to hold our breath.

Dawn began breaking somewhere in Kentucky, and daylight steadily increased as we crossed into Tennessee. Unlike rivers and mountain ranges, which set real boundaries on motion on the ground, state lines are administrative and psychological—though they do often coincide with water and mountain. Whenever I cross into Tennessee I feel a sense of arrival, of being home. It is the place I have spent the largest number of my years. Decades ago the signs at the borders said, “Welcome to the Three States of Tennessee,” referring to the geographically and culturally distinct East, Middle, and West. Wisely, state government changed the signs to a more unified, “Tennessee Welcomes You.” But the regions coincide with my own experiential map, as I lived for extended times in each of the three regions. Though I’ve lived other places, I feel as if I’m from the whole state. On this morning in in 2014 we were entering from the rare northern direction, but the sense of home was undiminished.

The Welcoming Party at my In-laws’

We arrived at my in-laws’ house shortly after 7:00 a.m., in time to join them for coffee and watch birds and boats on Old Hickory Lake. Through the daze of sleep deprivation we related bits of the journey. Charlotte was thin, lethargic, and weak, but she was now sipping half-and-half and eating little bites of dog food patties.   It was good–in the deepest sense of the word–to be in the company of family beside still waters.

Fear–at the Boundary of Reality and Imagination

6/25/14, Wednesday

Camp at Shell Creek
We were undisturbed by moose in the night.

On this trip I have not tired of new scenes. Every day I feel and openness to whatever may come our way. The attention I pay to the surroundings is a bit like the rapt focus I experience at the cinema. Anything I might miss could jeopardize the entire experience. On the way out of Shell Creek we stopped to look at

Dandelions and Blue Lupines

blue Lupines and dandelions, and under a cloudless morning sky we climbed through alpine terrain of pine forests, barren rocky slopes, meadows, and snow-capped peaks. We reached the highest road elevation of our travels entering Sheridan County at 9,033-ft. Granite Pass. As we continue across the Bighorn range, the shape of the clouds in the atmosphere above the mountain and the broad valley below make me ache, and my eyes were wet again with emotion.

A Prospect from 9,000-ft. Granite Pass

A few years ago while attending a lecture in the Honors Program at UAB I learned a word—and the concept that goes with it—proprioception. It is the “sixth sense” by which, for instance with your eyes closed you can unerringly bring your fingertips together

We Were There
I include this photo, not out of narcissism, but as proof to myself that I was actually in this place.

at arm’s length. It’s the sense each part of your body has for the positions of the other parts relative to it. Today I’m wondering if there is a “seventh sense,” a perception of the place your body occupies relative to the geological and cosmological surroundings. I’m not talking exactly about the slightly woo-woo Gaia hypothesis but perhaps something like that. It may be that we humans have in us a little bit of what allows migratory birds to go north and south with the seasons or what allows salmon to return to their spawning grounds. One way we can begin to elicit that sense is by being in places that are absent of manufactured things, where we can sense the large scale and small.

Rock Formations along US-14
Rock along the cuts for the highway are labeled by name and age. This is one of the youngest; the ages of some were in the billions of years.

At the end of a descent to the valley east of the Bighorn Mountains we enter Dayton, which identifies itself as “a little piece of heaven.” I fell in love with this place in the few moments we were there. A couple of moms pushed babies in strollers, and on the edge of town was the Crazy Woman Saloon. We crossed the Tongue River and met cowboys on horseback driving a herd of

Cattle Drive near Dayton

black Angus beside and on the road.

We passed a car with Oregon tags pulling a U-Haul. The bumper sticker said, “Midwives help people out.”

Thomas wanted to go to Devil’s Tower, so we set off northward on a side trip. We covered rolling hills and grassland, until we caught sight of a gray shape in the distance. Several more miles’ driving brought us to the entrance to the National Monument, and our season Park Pass got us in. The rock is a bit like a photographic negative.

Devil’s Tower
The “negative” left after the surrounding volcano and land eroded away.

An ordinary volcano—active or extinct—is visible on the outside, and what’s inside is not visible unless it pours out the top as lava. Here we were seeing what’s left when the volcano above an “igneous intrusion”—what a great technical term—has eroded away over millions of years.

A 1.3 mile trail encircles the tower, and we set off to walk it. Between the trail and the upright sides of the tower lies a boulder field, and some visitors enjoy going off the trail and hopping from rock to rock. At the halfway point, on the south side of the tower, we saw a man sitting on a bench watching the tower.

“You see those people up there?” he said.

Can You Find the Climbers?

We looked for a few moments and finally saw two groups of tiny-looking climbers about two-thirds of the way up the 800-ft high rock.

“That’s my ex-wife, my son, and his friend. This is my birthday present,” he said, explaining that the spectacle of their attempting the ascent in less than four hours was celebratory entertainment.

“She’s sixty and in pretty good shape. She’s done some climbing, but this is her first really big one. My son has no fear. His challenge for this sort of thing is to learn where the boundaries are and stay on this side of them.”

“And I’d say that people who have fears surrounding, say, rock climbing have to do the opposite—push through their fear to find what’s possible, to reach toward those boundaries,” I replied.

“Exactly,” he said.

Thomas and I went up a little way into the boulder field, and he was a bit ahead of me. He disappeared behind a few scrub trees, and I said, “Thomas I think you’ve gone up far enough.”

He replied, “OK,” and sat down on a rock.   I turned around for a few minutes to look out over the farms below and was lost in reverie about this place. When I looked back at where he had been sitting, partly occluded by the vegetation, I didn’t see him. Gauging his fascination with the climbers high up, I thought he might have clambered a bit higher to get a better view of them. I called his name and heard no reply, so I went up a few more steps to see if I could spot him. I didn’t see him and called his name, a little more forcefully. No reply.

It had been only a few minutes, so I waited a while longer, figuring he would come back down shortly. The time stretched to twenty and then thirty minutes. An unpleasant sensation was deepening in my gut. I shouted his name several times and heard nothing. I looked at my phone and saw there was a signal, so I called and then texted him. There was no answer on either channel.

A half hour stretched into an hour, and I found a steep trail that went up the general direction I surmised he had gone. I went up it until I encountered a sign that said people going beyond that point without a permit were subject to fines. I yelled several more times, and hearing no reply, I was nearing panic. What if he had attempted to climb a rock barehanded and fallen and knocked himself unconscious? What if he had broken a limb? Was I going to have to make a terrible phone call to the rest of the family?

I went back down to the birthday guy and asked him, if he saw my son, to send him around to the visitor center where I would be. He agreed. I started walking and then running along the path toward the visitor center, passing with increasing rapidity the folks who were strolling without a care. At the visitor center I approached the first ranger I saw and told her, in as measured a voice as possible, that I thought my son might have encountered some trouble in the boulder field and it had been over an hour since I saw him.

She talked to one of the senior rangers, and he said, “Before we go over there, have you checked at your vehicle to see if your son might have returned there?”

I said I would do that and walked toward the place where the car was parked. Sitting on the edge of the trunk eating a peanut butter sandwich and drinking water was Thomas. I turned and waved at the rangers and gave a thumbs-up. Then I went over to Thomas. “I am really glad to see you. You scared the s**t out of me!”

Prairie Dog at Devil’s Tower

He had gone back downhill out of the boulder field to the trail instead of up as I had imagined, and not seeing me anywhere he assumed I had gone back to the car. Not finding me in the parking lot, he figured it was better to just stay put—which it was. On our bathroom wall at home  is a card with a quote from Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” In this case, accidentally and involuntarily, I had experienced a counterexample to that maxim.  I was simply glad of the knowledge Thomas was alive and whole.

An Old House near Keystone, South Dakota This was a nice antidote to the strip in Keystone itself.

We got on the road and headed toward Mount Rushmore. After a few hours of driving, we arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota. This town seemed different from many of the other western towns of this scale. It seemed dirtier, scruffier than others. Against the curbs and on the sidewalks there was strewn fine gravel, sand, and dirt, as if all the grit winter snowplows had compiled with snow and ice on the roadside had dropped when the spring melt came. The roads were more jammed with billboards than in other western places, and when we arrived at Keystone, I immediately arrived at a set of equations: Keystone, SD = Pigeon Forge, TN = Gettysburg, PA = …. Presidential wax museums, candy stores, restaurants, motels, tramways, petting zoos, Borglum paraphernalia, and much more were crammed into the two gaudy sides of a main street plied by tourists unaccustomed to being pedestrians.

Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln, and the encapsulating heraldry

At the top of a winding, steep, four-lane road we arrived at a parking garage for the attraction itself. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt are impressive, but the encapsulation of their images in a monolithic Center

Viewing a planet through a telescope, you can see it best by averted vision–looking off to one side. I found this technique helpful at Mount Rushmore.

surrounding and framing the monument seemed excessive. We walked the presidential trail and looked up the presidents’ nostrils, and we went to the sculptor’s studio where stood a scale plaster model that the workmen used during the period 1927 to 1941 to chisel and blast the images from stone.

The Right-hand View of the Sculpture

Inside the mountain somewhere underneath Lincoln is a stone room they hollowed out, called the Hall of Records, in which a time capsule has been placed, which is not to be opened for 5,000 or even 10,000 years. The park official who told me this was a bit condescending—“If you’d only read what the display says, you would know that there are no further plans for sculptures here and that no one can visit the Hall of Records…”

Vanity Plates at Wall Drug, Wall, SD

We came, we saw, we left, and we headed back through Rapid City and then eastward on I-90. Signs every few miles referred to Wall Drug: “5-cent coffee for veterans,” “Free donut with lunch in the café, “outdoor playground,”

Wall Drug, the Rock City of South Dakota

“Wall Drug, coming up soon.” As a storm was beginning we took the Wall, South Dakota exit and went to the place itself.  Closing time was in fifteen minutes, and they were mopping the floors in the café. T-shirts, cowboy hats, jewelry, vanity license plates, candy, food, haircuts, and even a chapel were just part of this cowboy souk. Indeed, this place reminded me of some of the marketplaces we visited in the UAE late last year. Thomas said, “Just don’t say that too loudly here.”

As we drove east, the storm’s intensity increased, and lightning arced continuously from cloud to cloud. Exits were sparse. Rain fell harder and harder. Near Kadoka, South Dakota, it began to hail, and I said, “It’s time to get off the road and find a motel.” Through the dark and rain we saw lights, and then an exit ramp. The lantern logo of a Budget Host was the first sign of lodging we saw, and we pulled into a space in front of the office. Behind the desk the short, dark-haired woman behind the desk laughed when I stepped soaking into the lobby. The insult notwithstanding, we got a room.

Maestoso, Adagio, and Allegro

6/24/14, Tuesday

In July 1805, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their men were paddling and towing their rafts upstream along the Missouri River through what is now Montana. Their general direction was southwest, as the river arcs northward through the central part of the state. Their journal entries on July 25 of that year speak of reaching a fork. Lewis wrote [The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 2005. U of Nebraska Press / U of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries-Electronic Text Center.]

 This morning Capt. Clark set out early and at the distance of a few miles arrived at the three forks of the Missouri, here he found the plains recently birnt on the stard. side, and the track of a horse which appeared to have passed only about four or five days.    after taking breakfast of some meat which they had brought with them, examined the rivers, and written me a note informing me of his intended rout, he continued on up the North fork, which though not larger than the middle fork, boar more to the West, and of course more in the direction we were anxious to pursue. …

Clark wrote

 a fine morning    we proceeded on a fiew miles to the three forks of the Missouri    those three forks are nearly of a Size, the North fork appears to have the most water and must be Considered as the one best calculated for us to assend  middle fork is quit as large about 90 yds. wide. The South fork is about 70 yds wide & falls in about 400 yards below the midle fork.    those forks appear to be verry rapid & Contain Some timber in their bottoms which is verry extincive,— on the North Side the Indians have latterly Set the Praries on fire, the Cause I can’t account for. …

Mountains North of Yellowstone
A glimpse of our drive into Yellowstone, terrain not unlike what Lewis and Clark saw.

They had been at what is now called Three Forks, Montana, a spot we crossed yesterday on our approach to Bozeman. Though the did not go into what is now Yellowstone National Park, the Corps of Discovery were close, and I wondered what the men and woman of the expedition really experienced. This a.m. in 2014, Clark’s “a fine morning” was apt. The sky and the earth—modulo a few extra roads, fields, and buildings—looked today the way they did in 1805.

On our drive from Bozeman south into Wyoming, I learned a great deal more about Yellowstone and passed that along to Thomas as he drove.

The Roosevelt Gate to Yellowstone Park

It’s the first national park, not just in the US but in the world. Created by an act of congress in 1872, it consists of over three thousand square miles mostly in northwest Wyoming, of mountains, lakes, meadows, streams, rivers, geysers, and hot springs, along with everything that lives within that boundary. The scale of the preserve matches that of the nature it encompasses, and in spite of the crowds of tourists benched around Old Faithful waiting for its next eruption and queued along the hundreds of miles of park roads, one can easily get lost–in the best sense of this phrase–in

Pronghorn Near the Entrance

this wilderness. Theodore Roosevelt said, the park was “the best idea America ever had.”

As we went south on US-89—the same route on which we had traveled northward through Arizona a couple of weeks earlier toward our fateful incident—we had the radio on. Moving through the grandeur of the landscape, we heard the mournful pathos of the Adagio movement of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto flow into the car, and I was in tears. If I were seeking to do a few last things in the face of looming death, to be in Yellowstone accompanied with this music might be one of them. Then the Rondo began and we sat in the visitor center parking lot to listen until the end. I was stirred to life again, and we both were ready to tour the park.

One of the Hot Springs

Yellowstone management recommends horseback as a good way to get around the park, and many people bring steeds in trailers. Others brought home itself on wheels, either a RV towed behind a big pickup or a self-propelled house. Some of these are merely large, and others in which whole wall panels extend outward once they are parked are enormous. Some arrive with a jeep in tow, bicycles lashed on the RV, and kayaks strapped to the roof of the jeep. When we arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs where Old Faithful erupts, it was debatable which was the greater spectacle, the rivulets and sea of cars and RV’s in the acres of

Mineral-crusted Geyser near Old Faithful
I found the boardwalk stroll past these springs and geysers much more enjoyable than OF itself. Looking down into the clear, hot water or watching a small eruption up close is more satisfying than seeing “the big one.” Sometimes I’d rather not try to drink from the proverbial fire hose.

parking at the adjacent Grant Village or the ground spewing steam. Cell service worked in this spot, and I overheard a college-age girl say, “It’s going off in twenty-three minutes,” as she looked at an app on her phone.

We traveled the western and northern shore of Yellowstone Lake, a natural body whose surface covers 130 square miles and is 7,000 feet in elevation. Except where hot springs feed it under the surface, it freezes to a depth of 3 feet in winter. Toward the eastern sector of the park, we encountered more snow-capped peaks and a winding road where the shoulder was littered with obsidian rubble and boulders as big as cars. Even a brief day tour such as this elicited the same slack-jawed awe we’ve had in other sites around the West. It was not difficult to see why, in the face of westward expansion in the US in the nineteenth century, the voices of those who had explored and wanted to preserve this were so strong.

Out of the park, we followed a thunderstorm that washed over the western part of the Bighorn Basin ahead of us. US-14 provided wide vistas and roadside sights. “Wyoming is Beef Country!” crowed a billboard.

Mystic Lady Antler Art, Near Cody, Wyoming

A twenty-foot high pile of deer antlers marked Mystic Lady Antler Art. In Cody, Wyoming we needed gas, and Thomas suggested eating. On a hunch, we pulled into the gravel, mud-puddled parking lot of Cassie’s Fine Foods, Libations, and Good Times.

Yellowstone Lake, 7,000 feet up in the Mountains

A wide frame structure with a deep plank-floored porch, they building had three entrances: the bar, the dance hall, and the dining room. We chose the third door and entered a twilight-lit tiered dining room with stuffed animal heads high on the walls and a gaggle of glass-encased taxidermied pheasants. The steak dinners did look tempting—they ranged from $25 to $100—but neither of us was feeling quite that flush or trencherman-ly.  Thomas decided on a “double hangover” burger and I an elk-bison burger. He is at a phase of life where he eats more and faster than I do, but on this occasion the task before him was too much, and a to-go box was necessary.

Cassie’s, as the Sign Says

East from Cody we continued across the Bighorn Basin and on the trail of a thunderstorm. Illuminated from the west behind us, the wet grasslands were green, and a double rainbow stayed in front of us for an hour as we made our way across this

The Super Hangover Burger
Question: does it cure or cause one?

landscape toward the Bighorn Mountains to the east, our destination for the end of the day. We’d tuned in to a local radio station and cranked up the volume on Joan Jett singing “I Hate Myself for Lovin’ You”, John Mellenkamp singing “Small Town,” and much more.

Grasslands of the Bighorn Basin

At the town of Greybull we saw what appeared to be an airplane graveyard, with rows of jets sitting in a field. Continuing on US-14, we entered a narrow, deep canyon

A Double Rainbow East of Cody

and commenced an ascent through a mountain-scape like no other we had visited before. Daylight was coming to and end, and we were anxious to catch sight of a National Forest campground indicated on the road atlas. After miles of seeing no other cars or people, we began to wonder if we’d made a mistake, but then we caught sight of the familiar brown and yellow sign Forest Service sign that said Shell Creek Campground.

The host Stan was a cheerful Oregonian with thick glasses, and he said, “Have your pick.” When I asked, “Anything we should watch out for?” he replied, “No bears. But we’ve had two or three moose here throughout the day.” Some of the other campers were watching a cow, bull, and calf roaming the campground.

Moose Roaming About Shell Creek Campground
We did not get any close-up photos, for good reasons.

Thomas and I had begun to set up the tent when we stopped to join the other observers. The trio made its way to our site and sniffed around. There was no way I was even going to appear to threaten that calf, so we stayed a good distance back. Finally they made their way downstream and, I hoped, out of the grounds. Our neighbor came over and chatted for a few minutes.   He was a police officer from one of the towns north of Cody and was out for the weekend with his kids. “Father and son road trips are pretty rare these days,” he opined when we told him about our travels. Seeing the Glock on his belt, I somehow felt reassured should we find ourselves face to face with an angry moose cow in the night.

As it was cold, we built a fire. Thomas lay in his sleeping bag atop the picnic table, and I sat and watched the embers until it began to drizzle. We had already put on the rain fly, and our reliable Ozark Trails backpacking tent would turn the water and keep us dry.

Being Male

6/23/14, Monday

Some Heavy-duty Outdoors-folks

The routine of work-a-day commenced early. A. and H. donned the uniforms of the corporate arena—tie, suit, briefcase. With mom’s help S. and G. assembled their gear in little backpacks for the summer day camps. Thomas and I stuffed things into our bags, said our thank-yous and goodbyes, and saw them off. One more look around our rooms yielded nothing else to pick up. Pausing at the door that would lock behind us, we slapped backsides and thighs to check that wallet, phone, and keys were on board. The evergreens and soft bluegrass were still, as if whispering, “You’re really going to do this?”  Leave-taking—whether in the presence of others or not, is difficult. Door closed, we were on our way again.

Haying in Eastern Washington

We drove east, past Snoqualmie Pass, by ski slopes, and through more infinite mountainside pine forests. Listening to the radio, we heard a promo for a series from NPR on “modern masculinity” and both took note. “How about that! People talk about being male,” we might as well have said. For over twenty years, the female to male ratio in our house was larger than 1, and for two years it was equal to 1, when oldest daughter had finished high school and second daughter was not yet in college.

Road, Land, Clouds, and Sky in Eastern Washington

When number two went to college, the ratio became less than 1, and Kathryn said, “What am I going to do?” But the legacy of that long period of female focus has persisted, and even beyond that, conversations and attention have tended to be more about feminism, female-empowerment, and wonderment at western patriarchy. Thomas and I both seemed to be thinking along the same lines, “Wow, this man thing could be interesting. We don’t get to hear much about this at home.”  We made a mental note to tune in.  The radio programming turned toward renaissance Terpsichore—sackbutts and shawms making reedy melodies–and we turned it off.

RVs Rule
RVs are abundant in the West, and this brand comes with its own built-in scenery.

At a rest area near Ellensburg, Washington a woman struck up a conversation with Thomas, and when I returned from the restroom she said, “You must be the dad.” Already the signature event of the trip had come up. She and her husband were on their way to her father-in-law’s to help put up hay. Others in their family make a living in agriculture—raising buffalo and growing onions, on the scale of 1500 acres at a time.

When we mentioned our origin in the Southeast, she exclaimed, “You don’t have an Alabama brogue!” The frequency with which that observation occurs is surprising, and it feeds my belief that outside the region there is an expectation that everyone from the South speaks with a completely place-able accent and occupies a certain caste. I confess a self-consciousness about that, and as a consequence have generally lost any accent I had—though I can bring it on at will. My logic is that speaking that way distracts others, much as a man wearing loud cologne or a woman wearing a low-cut blouse. There is enough “business” in me to want to remove roadblocks to communication. A friend from my hometown who speaks with not a “southern” accent but with the indigenous “Appalachian” accent is one of the most intelligent people I know and works as an engineer in Wisconsin for a large medical devices company. He says this is a deliberately defiant tactic, to play to others’ expectation that a hillbilly drawl is the bark of a know-nothing.

The Courthouse in Missoula, Montana
Walking around the square, I was panhandled by a group of native Americans (gave them the change in my pockets). In the town Safeway, the guy in front of us wore a T-shirt that said “I fight dirty;” he competes in the Dirty Dash, an annual mud run. Lost for a while, we waited on a freight train at a railroad crossing along with other cars, bikers, and walkers. I would move here in a minute.

At Moses Lake, Thomas said, “Wonder if we could make it split?” His query came after a long silence, so it took me just a moment to get his joke. We had changed radio stations, and the radio played David Nail’s Whatever She’s Got

She’s got the blue jeans painted on tight

That everybody wants on a Saturday night.

She got the mood ring; she’s never the same.

She’s sunny one minute, then she’s pouring down rain.

At least on the FM spectrum, the Nashville sound dominates everywhere in the country. No other style has better song lyrics, and I think statistics indicate there are more listeners to country music than any other form. Maybe having both an X and a Y chromosome, and being from south of the Mason Dixon Line are not the worst of human conditions.

Almost without exception on this journey, people whom I’ve encountered have been cordial, polite, helpful, and willing to engage in conversation. The couple this morning is a good example. They engaged us as fellow human beings, talked without an agenda, and wished us well. Toward the end of our chat they expressed gratitude for this country. For them, the land itself is the matrix of support, and the expanse it shows is awe inspiring. They are, like almost all people you encounter on the road and in towns, descendants of settlers from somewhere else on the planet—on the interior, it’s still northern Europe, near the southern borders it’s descendants of mestizos, and on the coast people from Asia. What is absent, and yet implicit, is the life, character, and spirit of the peoples who lived on this continent from about 12,000 BCE up until about the fifteenth century when European nations embarked on colonizing North and South America. The story of that human life is a bit like the dark matter of the universe—mysterious and potentially never knowable by those who are descendants of the settlers.

The large scale shape of the ground is somehow much more evident in the west than in the east, part of that because low lands in the west are much more sparsely vegetated. Exceptions to that are in such places as the forests of western Oregon and Washington and the highlands of New Mexico and Arizona. Being in these spaces evokes the lingering spirits of those now-vanished, decimated, and removed people who once looked out over the land and up at the stars at night and lived in matrilineal societies less burdened by individual ownership of property than Europeans.

Crossing Paths with Lewis and Clark

Near the Montana border, Thomas sighted a billboard that he could not believe. It advertised the 33^rd annual Testicle Festival in Clinton, Montana in late July. The name says it all—well, almost. The description mentioned “world championship Rocky Mountain oyster eating, no one under 21 admitted, no dogs, no glass, no outside beverages, and free shuttle service.”  The existence of such a multi-day party, nominally a male romp, shattered part of Thomas’ view of the world. Not all males—or females either—are as introspective and philosophical as the ones selected for interviews on NPR. For many, keg parties and wet-tee-shirt contests are part of living the good life.

By the end of the day we had tested our new wheels with nearly seven hundred miles of driving. It performed well, and my nervousness about its durability subsided. Our new miracle of German engineering brought us to Bozeman, Montanta.

Totally Auto-matic, but not Automatic

6/22/14, Sunday

A “New” set of Wheels
We’ll be back to the mode of sharing driving.

We met the owner, drove the Jetta, and found it to be sound—starter worked, clutch firm, hoses and belts intact, tires not badly worn, brakes worked, air conditioner blew cold air.  One ding in the front and a few scratches on the back bumper were about all the bodily defects, not bad for a thirteen-year-old car.  After pulling aside to discuss how to deal with the owner’s mention of a lien, we ultimately decided the deal was on the up-and-up and concluded the transaction with a check, exchange of a bill of sale, keys, registration, and a copy of the lienholder’s information and an address to which they should send the title.  Returning the rental car, Thomas and I were back to sharing the biggest task of road travel.

Our road trip has been completely integrated with the phenomenon of the automobile.  An essential component of existence for a big chunk of the earth’s population, in the US we rely on a car almost as much as we rely, say, on our lungs.  A baby is typically born in a hospital and then carried home in … a car.  Unlike being set free from an umbilicus or a baby bottle, we are never weaned from the automobile; the relationship only deepens throughout life, and in the end a hearse often carries our remains to the cemetery.  About various aspects of human economy and markets, one of my professors in B school would often say, “It is what it is.”  The subtext–at least that I took from this–is that in business and generally in life, you’re better off dealing with things as they are rather than as you wish they were.  Recognizing and living the is of the automobile as we have been on this journey, it is still possible to take a stretch of hours or days and be a human in touch with the ground only on foot.  Those times often are, or coincide with, the time in thin places.  Perhaps the objective of our expedition has been partly to tip the balance between auto time and thin time.

Yesterday, Thomas, A., H., and I had talked of an activity for the today, but our use of the morning had made infeasible the trip to Mount Rainier we had discussed.  I said I was perfectly happy just hanging out with them at home.  Having been to the Northwest on other occasions, we’ve “done” a lot, and under current circumstances, Thomas and both needed to re-charge by being in one place for a while and experiencing the closeness of family.

How to Camp
My thoughtful and creative niece made the perfect gift for us.

S. was preparing for a summer camp hike, so her mind was on breaking in a pair of boots and gathering materiel such as water and a compass.  Thinking of Thomas and me and our experiences hiking, she made us a wonderfully detailed Camping Information  sheet.   G. was intensely eager to show me robots and aircraft he’d made from Legos, and he wanted me to read from his great book of Lego constructions.  Near bedtime,

Younger and Youngest
Bedtime reading!

Thomas read to G. and proud mom and dads scrambled to get a picture of my baby reading to their baby.

 

Peaceful Day in Seattle

6/21/14, Saturday

S. and G. were the first up in the house, and they came directly to my room—their playroom–and bounced on my air mattress bed.  Early morning sunbeams sloped through the east window of the playroom where I’d slept, and this little symphony of light, kids, airborne stuffed animals, and Lego constructions was my alarm clock.  Mom said, “Let your Uncle Thomas sleep!” but I was glad to be awake and the focus of attention.

Through a for-sale list run by employees at A.’s workplace we found several automobiles.  Thomas made several calls and texts , and we winnowed down to one that seemed the right combination of mileage, vehicle type, and price—a 2001 Jetta.  The owner could only meet with us on Sunday, so we set that appointment for early morning.  I was keenly interested in owning a vehicle so Thomas could drive, and he was just as eager to return to the left seat.  We could return the rental early and be back more or less to the mode of traveling with which we started.

Ooh, that Sun is Bright!
Other than the demands of brother/uncle/brother-in-law to be in a photo, the Seattle waterfront is a great spot to walk and visit on the longest day of the year.

Having settled as much of that business as we could, the rest of the afternoon was open, so A. and H. drove us into Seattle where we parked on Alaskan Way and strolled along the waterfront.  Both engineers by training, A. and H. told about the current efforts to replace the viaduct running overhead with an underground roadway.  By last year an enormous machine had dug about a mile of a 40-ft. diameter tunnel, but it had got stuck.  Technical headaches and legal questions have been the main activity since then.

G. and Friend
The sea life in the lobby at Anthony’s Pier 66 is savvy about headwear.

The waterfront faces westward into Puget Sound, and sunset reminded us this was the longest day of the year.  H. remarked that we had brought nice weather with us—Seattle has its fair share of gray, drizzly days, but Friday and Saturday had been clear and dry.  Ferries plied the water, and pelicans swept overhead.  We had Pacific northwest seafood for dinner in Bell Street Diner, part of Anthony’s Pier 66.

Mount Ranier at Sunset
Much of the time the mountain is hidden in clouds, but at moments such as this, from the floating bridge across Lake Union, its appearance is startling.

On the way back to their house, heading east, snow-capped Mount Rainier was orange by the setting sun.

I-5 Ballad

6/20/14, Friday

Sleepy the Bear
I used to think there was something cheesy about a motel, in comparison with a hotel. Not any more. Small-chain and mom-and-pop are clean and comfortable, sometimes with an unexpected amenity such as a balcony, always with wi-fi and breakfast, and almost half the price of mainstream chains.

The woman in the Travelodge lobby re-stocked Styrofoam plates and packets of oatmeal for the “continental” breakfast.  Middle-aged, she wore dark-rimmed glasses, and did not smile or engage in chit-chat.  There was something about her… she looked like Fred Armisen.  I’ve only seen one or two episodes of Portlandia, but somehow the similarity jumped out at me.  Maybe it really was …?

Near Drain, Oregon we saw an old Plymouth Belvedere on a trailer in tow behind a tandem-wheel pickup truck.  The place and the object happened to be memorable here, though we have passed thousands of trailers in tow.  Each has its unique load–lumber, stones, a heterogeneous bale of the contents of a house, a homogeneous stack of bales of hay.  At any instant there is a colossal amount of matter in motion on the highways, and in the West we’ve encountered triple-trailer semis, wind turbine vanes, Bentleys, Teslas, Yarises, bicycles (they’re permitted on many western interstates), Harleys, and decades-old Ramblers.  Pickup trucks seem ubiquitous,  and many have a heavy-duty trailer hitch receiver at the back, a winch in the front, and  a toolbox in the bed.

This afternoon Thomas and I were both a bit testy.  Rather than inflame the other, we were silent a good bit of the drive.  As the miles work on, though we resumed talking–drivel to profundity.  Did the woman in the motel this morning remind you of anyone?  How far is it from Weed to Drain?  How would living in a place with an unusual name shape your perspective?  I spoke of the importance journal writing has had for me over the years–it’s a way not merely to record “what happened”  but a form of accounting for my time.  We talked about mind games for long drives and the psychological calculus surrounding these times–“Ninety-three miles, ooh, that’s still a ways off, but at 70 mph it’s only a little more than an hour’s driving.”  “Twelve miles, that’s no time.”  It was a good thing we were coming up on a couple of non-driving days.

Some of the Coma-inducing Fare from Voodo Doughnuts
It took me a couple of days to finish the one on the left.

Kathryn had said we must go to Voodoo Doughnuts and Powell’s City of Books, and our phones led us to both places seriatim.  A converted Shoneys painted pink, Voodoo is a go-to place for doughnuts in Portland and foodies elsewhere.  Posters of Kenny Rodgers, Elvis, and Elvira adorned the walls, and servers in black uniforms with nose rings cheerily served up doughnuts ranging from glazed to a coma-inducing concoction slathered with cream cheese icing and liberally sprinkled with Fruit Loops and Cap’n Crunch.

In the multi-story, multi-block Powell’s on the west side of the Columbia River crowds of people plied the aisles—T-shirt clad bearded young men, T-shirt clad bearded old men, young women with tattooed arms carrying babies in slings, women with real-gray hair, children afoot, and children in strollers.  Most seemed to have the glazed looks of readers in search of their genres.  I succumbed to the atmosphere and fell upon Douglas Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop for several pages, enough to be tempted to buy it.  I thought of Kathryn’s more than occasional mention of raising livestock when I saw Chickens in 5 Minutes a Day, a friendly, full-color, how-to, see-it’s-easy book published by… a company that sells chicks.

To round out our experience in Portland we went into a Whole Foods for peanut butter, apples, and tea.  It’s tempting to say that the three places in which we set foot go along with a prevailing stereotype about the city.  But that would be like saying that after going to the Civil Rights Institute, Sloss Furnace, and Dreamland one had been to Birmingham.  In the brief time we had in Portland, we did get a literal and figurative taste of life there.

Inching along in miles of stopped traffic spanning the Columbia River bridges, I commented to Thomas, “I kinda like being stuck in traffic like this.  It’s a way to get a sort of driving tour without driving.”  He jotted that one down for the record book: “Daddy said…!”.   We turned on the radio and both got absorbed in Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor.   The slow beginning coincided with our little movements in the lane, and as the pace of the music accelerated and the volume increased, traffic moved along faster.

It seemed the distances to Seattle on the road signs never decreased.  I had been driving for over a week and was ready for another zero day.  Along I-5, Uncle Sam asked from a crudely-lettered billboard, “Do domestic terrorists need to be taken out with illegal drones, too?”  Rush hour traffic picked up around Olympia, and we flowed with it through Tacoma, around Seattle, and by communities with Chinook names such as Sammamish, Issaquah, and Klahanie.

At long, long last we arrived at the home of my brother A. and sister-in-law H. east of Bellevue, Washington.  Their place is an island of peace and quiet, shaded by spruce, fir, pine, and hemlock–a welcome end to a day and a week of seemingly endless driving.  Niece S., a fourth grader, and nephew G., a first grader, were ecstatic to have company, and they tapped on the living room window and called to us when we got out of the car.  We welcomed hugs and didn’t have to be told twice they said, “Come on in!”  Thomas and I actually had two separate rooms, so he would be spared my snoring.  Some of our story preceded us, but we had plenty both to tell and hear over dinner.

My youngest brother was born when I was eight, and I was called on to help out when he was a baby, toddler, and beyond.  At times, Thomas’ personality reminds me of his, and when the two of them stood side by side I found the similarities disorienting.  They are about the same height, have a similar intonation, and have much the same measured and insightful view of the world.  On account of distance, A. and I do not see each other frequently, but when we do I am struck by similarities between him and myself ranging from general outlook to how things are arranged in the refrigerator.  Genetics and epigenetics–yes, and yes.

 

Following in the Footsteps

6/19/14, Thursday

The First Encounter with Snow at Crater Lake

Planning a hike to the lake, we splurged and had a hot breakfast in the park restaurant. The meal was immense, but we were cold and hungry and ate it all. Fortified, we struck camp, put everything in the car and set out to hike to Rim Village, which would take us about six miles up the mountain along a section of the PCT. About two or three miles in we encountered a few melting snow banks, and-corroborating the park official’s words yesterday—at their melting edges were little swarms of mosquitos newly hatched. Thomas set the pace, and particularly on steep uphill sections it was faster than I could maintain without panting and sweating. I rationalized that the air was thinner at this altitude and that I was carrying the backpack.

More of the ground was covered in snow the higher we went, and we reached a point of continuous snow on the forest floor. The only way to find the trail now was to look for blazes on the trees, 3-inch square diamond-shaped aluminum plates painted sky blue with a white dot in the middle. Some twenty feet up each trunk, the next was not always visible, so to be sure we did not lose the trail, one of us would stand by a blazed tree while the other walked uphill and then on a radial path to sight the next one. All of this slowed our progress, and to my surprise, Thomas said, “Do you think we should turn back?”

“I think we’re close to the Rim Village.  Let’s keep going a bit more,” I said.  We were approaching a crest, and after climbing a bit more we heard an automobile. Crossing the road, we walked across a parking lot to a loose cluster buildings—café, visitor center, restrooms, and lodge—and merged into the crowds who had ridden up.

A park rep gave us a map and said the only trail out from the center that was open was to Garfield Peak. In other words, the trail we’d followed was still closed for the winter—hence the difficulty in following it.

Being at Crater Lake after a Lifetime of Imagining

As a kid, I had seen photographs of Crater Lake and fantasized about being there some day. That fascination stemmed from a time in elementary school when my friends and I wanted nothing but to read about volcanoes. I recalled the story of Parícutin, discovered by a farm boy as a smoking hole opening up in a cornfield, and of Krakatoa making a winter out of summer around the world.

On the Trail to Garfield Peak
I have not shrunk–Thomas is standing on a rock!

Crater Lake had seemed to my elementary-school self like a diorama one of my classmates had made–not a real place. Being there, and on such a spectacularly beautiful day, brought me a sense of completion and clarity.

 

Blue Water, a Line of Land, and Blue Sky
Crater Lake is a thin place; the distance between earth and heaven is narrow here. We may have actually reached through for a moment.

The clarity, sharpness, and purity of this scene intimate how it actually feels to be there.  While I have not mentioned it since the beginning of the blog, we have been to several of those thin places.  Crater Lake is one of them.  I’m not prepared to estimate the distance, but it is narrow. Here, though, is a conundrum.  Often thin places are remote and harsh.  They are not places in which a person or a group can live continuously, raise crops, invent, build, carry on commerce, and have sufficient time and energy to reflect and create.  But that time-limited dimension of such spots is bound up with the very definition.  Is it possible to be continuously in touch with creation?

One of the Poles to Locate the Road in Winter

Trail Blazes can be Hard to Find

While I lingered over the placid blue lake, Thomas hiked out to Garfield Peak, and after a while I went to find him. He was coming back down the trail when we met, and he carried an air of deep satisfaction. Evidently the already rocky and steep trail turned into snow and ice at the peak, and hands and feet were necessary. While he had followed an already beaten track, it was evidently one carrying a certain amount of risk, and I was glad both that he was safely back down and that I had not seen him climbing.

Seeing Thomas walk with a spring in his step and sustain an energetic pace throughout the day, I amazed that the little boy of only a few years ago is now a young man. His deep enjoyment of the outdoors is as gratifying as his willingness to be in the company of his old man. Some differences have emerged between us in the last few days, and each of us has expressed frustration at the other. That would be inevitable with any two people on any trip of this duration.  When others mention how articulate, reliable, or mature he is, I am glad to say, “Thank you!  I’ll keep him–as long as I can.”

I am glad to have hips, knees, core, and desire to do these “strenuous” hikes. Returning from a backpacking weekend a couple of years ago Kathryn said to me, “At your age, you still like to sleep on the ground?” No one has used that phrase before or since, and I try not to think in those terms.  I feel much as I recall feeling when I was Thomas’ age, and I’m grateful for the capacity to enjoy all this with him.  On the other hand, like most people at my age, I have received reminders of the finiteness of life and fragility of health to appreciate these moments deeply.

At the end of our hike we were content to ride in the car across 120 miles of pine forests, lakes, and mountains. Our final descent into the coastal area of Oregon along the Umpqua River along OR-138, was 35 miles of pure downhill—a cyclist’s delight going west, but a steady labor going east. After three nights of camping, we were ready for a motel and found a Travelodge in Roseburg. Sleepy the bear decorated everything from a tile in the shower to the glazed glass screen at the pool. It was a clean, spartan room that looked much as it did in the 1970s, with a balcony overlooking the South Umpqua River.

Open Air, Finding Weed, and Getting High

6/18/14, Wednesday

A Eucalyptus Tree
The scent of the tree outdoors is sweet and distinct. No wonder the leaves are an ingredient in potpourri.

I think I would never get tired of the high hills, golden grasslands, ranches, dairies, and vineyards of central California just inland from the coast.  On this morning we were traveling, as we have fairly often on this trip, with the windows down–an air party our family calls it.  As if the scents of grasses and warming earth weren’t pleasant enough, we caught a whiff of an additional aroma.  “What is that smell, Thomas?”  We looked around, and saw a row of immense, shaggy-barked trees–eucalyptus!  In the 19th century they were introduced to California from Australia in hopes that the logs produced by these fast-growing trees would make good railroad ties.  Those hopes were dashed when the ties cut from them twisted and hardened into unusable, impenetrable shapes.

We went inland and got a fill-up in Larkfield-Wikiup at a Valero. The store sold Indian grocery items, liquor, and a good deal of the usual salt-, fat-, and carb-rich American fare in plastic wrappers. A box of methi khari puffed pastries and a bag of sesame brickle were a perfect combination of road snacks. We followed CA-29, which lived up to its designation on the Michelin map as a “scenic byway:” Robert Louis Stephenson State Park memorializes the authors brief travels in California, and farms and vineyards envelope this winding, up-and-down section of highway.

A billboard said, “Puzzled? God has answers. Call 1-800-GODWORD.” In almost every state on our journey we have seen analogous signs. Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, Alabama has no monopoly on public admonitions to repentance. And in every locale where we listened to the radio the lower-frequency FM stations were dominated with preaching, Biblical interpretation, and advice on right living.

Near Williams, California we stopped at the Charter Family Fruit Stand, which purveys produce from the Central Valley.  We bought a big bag of brown rice, a bottle of olive oil, a jar of olives, tomatoes, and a cantaloup–all produced in the area.  The last two were for lunch, and the others for gifts.

An Entry Point for the PCT

Heading north of Reading into more pine-forested mountains we caught a glimpse of white above the green. Snow-topped Mount Shasta, one of the tallest peaks in California, was coming into view, and we figured we would go by it in a few more miles. It turned out to be many more miles before we got close to it and its nearby companion Shastina. Still farther north we stopped in

The Cougar Cafe in the Weed Mercantile Mall

Weed, CA for gas and decided to look for coffee. We stumbled upon Weed Mercantile Mall in what was originally the town’s general store, walked the creaky wooden floors to the café inside, and split a burger and fries. On the wall hung tee shirts giving a nod to the inevitable jokes about the town’s name.  The town’s motto:  “Weed like to welcome you.”

Thomas was particularly excited to see and set foot on the Pacific Crest Trail, and we stopped where it crosses I-5 north of Redding.  Though we saw no hikers in these few minutes, we were both thrilled at this first encounter with the west coast analog of the AT.  One of our hopes on this trip was to hike at least a few miles of the PCT, but doing it here was not in the itinerary.

Cattle Grazing in South Central Oregon

On into Oregon, we were on mile-high, well-watered agricultural land surrounded by remnants of volcanoes. The same blue sky that has followed us nearly the entire trip continued to illuminate our surroundings.

A Note-worthy Rest Area
Oregon’s welcome center made our pit stop a pleasure.

Over the years my siblings and I have laughed about a exasperated comment our father once made when we were children at a stop along an interstate highway. “North Carolina is not noted for its rest areas,” he proclaimed after emerging from a dirty restroom somewhere on I-40 in the Piedmont. At the entry to Oregon on US-97—another ultra-scenic stretch of highway by Michelin’s reckoning (and they haven’t been wrong yet)—Thomas and I stopped at a welcome center. It was late afternoon so the staff had left for the day. Traffic was light, and no one was there. The building was a spacious and attractive heavy frame structure with a metal roof and inside, the restrooms were immaculate, cavernous, illuminated by skylights, and furnished with brushed-steel urinals and sinks. Thomas commented first, and we both agreed it was impressive. So if this sample of one is any indication, then I have to turn my dad’s remark on its head: “Oregon should be noted for its rest areas.”

Not that Oregon should be noted only for its rest areas…. More breathtaking scenery came our way as we passed Klamath Falls, Upper Klamath Lake, farms and ranches, and then pine forests on the way toward Crater Lake National Park. Within the park boundary, at some six thousand feet in elevation, we began to see twenty-foot tall wooden poles lining the road, and we determined they marked where the road is when snow is many feet deep in winter. At the park we were happy to learn that the campground was not full but a bit dismayed that the mosquitoes lighting on us would not go away until snowmelt was complete. We built our first campfire of the trip.

Our First Campfire
It was chilly at Crater Lake campground and mosquitoes were out, so the heat and smoke were both welcome.

Here everything was green and moist, and sawed fire logs were stacked at every campsite, cut from trees downed by the winter’s snow. It felt strange to build a fire, as almost everywhere else to this point had been a tinderbox. We stood in the smoke to keep the insects off. As we wrapped up and shivered in our sleeping bags, the only worry was the white-lettered red signs along the road warning of

There Be Bears
Despite the sign, the woman who sold us our camp permit assured us that bears stay out in the back country.

bears…