For nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today.
From “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Epilogue: The trip comes to an end.
13,770 kilometres/8,556 miles
32 days
8 National Parks & Monuments:
- Smoky Mountains
- Arches
- Grand Canyon
- Zion
- Yosemite
- Yellowstone
- Devil’s Tower
- Badlands
20 States: Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland
When we got home, I was exhausted. The kids were exhausted. Silvia was exhausted. We unpacked and then huddled in our air-conditioned house with our eyes attached to screens for a good few days. This gave me time to assess and think, I suppose.
I am happy with the last post from Badlands, the one that reminds us to relish the beauty. The one on Yosemite is damn near perfect. Yet, we set out on this journey with other aspirations. We wanted to get out of the house. We wanted to see America, whatever that means. We wanted the kids to get some kind of break. Honestly, keeping ourselves and others safe from COVID was important but it was all the psychological stuff that was really paramount for us. People can criticize us. All of it was a tad crazy and perhaps more than a tad irresponsible. I did have worries about us either contracting COVID or being, somehow, super spreaders, leaving a trail of COVID dust wherever we went. Who knows. We are now in self quarantine here so talk to me in a few weeks.
We certainly were not perfect. Another person I know through a FB group did a similar thing and his tally included “0 public restrooms”—we failed on that point. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to use our tiny commode all the time. We certainly avoided all other public places. In fact, one of the things I had hoped to do was to talk to people—to chat with all the diverse characters that one would hope to meet on a USA road trip. I wanted to know better what people thought and to touch, if ever so gently, the humanity that I am nearly 100% certain exists in all of us. Yet, really, we didn’t talk to that many people. People kept their distance and most of the time, at campsites, that distance was pretty vast. We all seemed to be observing each other from a distance or passing each other very quickly, little satellites at night.
For the kids, however, the trip, as we hoped, was monumental. They are different, better, people now. They saw and thought and played and laughed and cried. They grew. They also got insights into the country that are super important.
Everyone is always trying to characterise ‘America’, to distill it down to some pithy observation. My kids and Silvia really know now how impossible that is. America is a country founded on ideals, or, more precisely, lofty ideas. That means that the room for interpretation, for diversity of thought, for a maddening whirl of good, bad, and ugly is inevitable here. How do you think about the two boys we met whose mother owned a small shop in Interior South Dakota with the gilded and suave of San Francisco? How do you compare the broad swathes of land that are only lightly sprinkled with people to the mass urban areas of the coasts? This goes well beyond Trum and all his hatred, all his racism, all his bile. This is about a hodgepodge of people living such completely different lives that it is incredible that we can share any ideals at all. And, this is the challenge of America. How do we as such a diverse set of people keep striving for the best promises of America? How do we make sure those promises grace all of us, equally, and in ways that let us appreciate the beauty? I’m certainly no closer to an answer to this but I know, after this long trip, that these seem to be the right questions to be asking.
When you get a chance to see America in this way, it deepens your sense that was best characterised by my mother in two basic principles for life: “Give each other a break” and “Leave the campsite a bit cleaner than when you found it.” The first implies that we not only need to be open to and understanding of other people and to not leap up on some judgement pedestal all the time but to also do the same for ourselves, to take a breath and accept the good, the bad, and the beauty of it all. The second means that we need to work to make it better for everyone else. These, to me, are not only universal but they are very particularly American lessons, at least in our best times.
Finally, I highly recommend such a journey. Do it. Take a month. My friend mentioned doing this on motorcycles a la “Easy Rider. Sounds cool to me. However, I must admit that, man, it was exhausting!!!
Beauty is at the center of it all.
Badlands
28 – 31 July
Elevation: Changes
Stormy
The name “Badlands” is imposing enough, let alone for this magical South Dakota national park. Online, the ‘bad’ is traced to French Canadian fur traders who called it "les mauvaises terres pour traverser," or "bad lands to travel through.” Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and ravished terrain would certainly lend to this perception. Yet, we also read, at the visitor’s centre, that the Lakota Tribe also call it ‘bad land’ for the mere fact that you can’t plant anything here because the land is in a constant state of erosion. This hills and jagged mountains are made of clay—not stone.
As such, the rain easily tears into its surface and pulls thin layer upon thin layer down into ever expanding gullies and valleys, exposing layers and layers of differing deposits left here millennia ago. It is one of the most dynamic and alive landscapes I have ever seen. It changes with each and every rain, with each breath of wind, with each stomp of foot. It looks so fragile, in fact, that I was amazed that the park system allows people to climb it, to tromp around on it. They know that it doesn’t matter. It is all being eroded. It is bad land in that we cannot grow crops in it, we cannot build on it, we cannot push it around to our will. It is only there to remind us of how stunning and amazingly beautiful the Earth and its endless currents can be.
The themes for this last post came rushing down on me just as the rain slashed at the ancient mountains of sacred clay and mud. This pandemic tore through our cities first, the primary centers if our interactions, where we have flocked to love and live, and then it spread out across the arteries of our countries, toward the desolate and lonely, spreading out as does all rain that pummels the earth.
COVID-19 is not some alien thing. It is not an interstellar abomination from a sci-fi film. It is from and of nature. It is natural. It is as much a part of Mother Earth as we are and as much as the slow mud and clay that moves from green to crimson to orange to purple to grey. Mother Nature is reminding us, screaming at us, to be humble in her presence for we are nothing but cosmic dust within her ancient annals, borne to be eroded away, just like everything else. And, lest us forget, this is not a terrible fate.
Our problem—or at least one of our problems in this context—is that we are always so damn set on constructing meaning, on explaining everything! We need to eat this way, think that way, look that way, not do this, do that—it is all exhausting. We are pounding ourselves into oblivion by thinking that there is some magical riddle that if we solve then everything will become clear. Everything will be explained. Everything will have meaning.
One of the fundamentals that drives this—drives me—is the endless patterns that exist in the chaos. The thinking goes that the cosmos cannot be meaningless because there are so many intricate patterns within it, from the cycle of the planet around the sun, to the cycle of life amongst all of us, to the number of petals on a flower, to the patterns of waves against a beach. We love our BIG DATA because it lets us identify more and more patterns and thus, we figure, more and more meaning. We just need to crunch the data and the patterns will all come into focus.
That’s where we get it wrong. That’s why Mother Nature is screaming at us. These patterns are not the source of meaning. They are the source of beauty. And that is awesome. We love beauty. It makes us oogle and chuckle. We love things that shine and soar. And my goodness, we are surrounded in every nook and cranny with beauty. It is within the tickle of a toe in hot sand as much as it is in the swing and spray of Vernal Falls. It is everywhere, if we look.
This pandemic has forced us to fall inwards with our closest family and friends and, for the luckiest of us, outwards into the boundless bosom of Mother Nature. It pushes us away from crass consumerism and the massive spectacle of commercialism. It pushes us toward baking bread at home and teaching our children new skills. I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. I know the pain and suffering that comes with this disease. I know the loss. I think about it and work toward helping those who are suffering from it every day. Yet, as we often say in humanitarian action, never let an emergency go to waste. The emergency here goes beyond the disease. It is a clarion call to all of us to get our houses in order, to make sure our priorities are right, and to remember that life is filled with beauty and that it is incumbent on us to see and spread that beauty to as many, many people as we can.
Watching geysers in Yellowstone
Old Faithful
Yellowstone/Bay Bridge Campground
25 – 27 July
Elevation: 7,800 f/2,377m
Mild and cloudy; cold at night
We stayed in the Bridge Bay campground on Yosemite Lake. This campground has 420 sites, making it more like a small village than a campsite. There were all kinds, from the rolling thunder of mobile home behemoths to simple Coleman tents. There was a pleasant Japanese couple next to us who had a bright white tent that glowed orange at night. There was a newly married couple, in their sixties, who were camping for the first time. There were the big families from the Midwest who seemed to set up camp and then sit around and drink all day. There were bikers on massive Harleys who became radical gourmands over their grills. There was a Latino family that played catch well into the dark. There was a long black cylindrical tent from which emerged a mixed-race family. It was, finally, a fair crosscut of America, with everyone literally and figuratively pitching tent in this massive campground in the equally massive Yellowstone National Park.
Kids at camp.
Maybe, just maybe, these gems of the country, the National Parks, had captured something that use to exist in baseball stadiums and bowling alleys? This refers to Robert Putnam’s academic work that describes how the weave of America changed with the rising dominance of capitalism. His argument goes that the rich and poor, the foreman and the worker, use to crowd together at baseball parks and played together, one and all, in bowling leagues. Now, there are sky boxes for the rich and bowling leagues have sunk well below the lowest brow. As this argument is from the eighties, it wreaks of simpler times. Todd Gitlan, who sparred with Putnam, countered with the power of the media, claiming that the television show All in the Family did as much for class and race relations as the civil rights movement. That was quite a way to make his academic name.
Contemporary times are seemingly so much more complex, well out of the reach of the academic’s backward glance. Capitalism? What does that mean in the instant gratification, Kardashian-esque buying frenzy in which Americans engage? The media? What is it? And before you answer that question know that it has splintered and mixed into something different by the time you’ve finished this sentence. The one thing that we know is that many of us are experiencing a sinking feeling of dread. There just seems to be so much despair and misery, even before Covid. Trump’s racist and authoritarian tirades. The looming existential threat of climate change. The quick erosion of civil rights. It all seems so bleak.
Yet, the Sixties were surely worse, with Vietnam and Equal Rights mixing together in a drug fueled lunacy? Or World War II? The First World War? How does this American era sit in history? Hard to say. Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of Empires in 1987, a not so subtle proclamation that the American empire was sinking fast. What if Trump refuses to leave office and his ignorant and angry minions take to the streets? They already seem to be doing so in their hyped-up response to BLM. Silvia asked if California could or would secede and I told her about how Governor Jerry Brown had plans drawn up for just that in the late Seventies. All of these ideas that seem old are actually, in historical terms, quite fresh and relevant. America is in a steady decline. The media and society have morphed into endless spectrums of isolated units that eye each other with ever more envy, suspicion, and, inevitably, hatred. The feeling of dread is real and justified.
Elk at camp.
Yet, here we are, pitching our own little tents amongst this random selection of America, all there to be outdoors, to watch the elk and bison as they meander through the site, to eat outside, and to master the labor of all this outdoor enterprise. People say hello and chat, most with masks and with an awkward distance between them. No friends were being made in this time of Covid but we were reaching out, trying to say that in this vast wilderness, we still have a place that we share together. On this great and awesome wilderness, maybe we all could agree.
Yellowstone is best known for its geysers, and Smoky the Bear, of course. Smoky the Bear was still on a lot of the signs and he made me smile every time. The geysers are strange. Putrid eruptions from deep within the earth, staining the surface yellow, red, and gray. I made the unfortunate joke of this being a case of Mother nature’s diarrhea—the kids latched onto this much to Silvia’s chagrin. The most famous geyser is Old Faithful that shoots up a good 100 feet every 90 minutes or so. It is surrounded by parking lots. We all come in our menagerie of trucks and campers, busses and jeeps, and then huddle together in a semi-circle around the geyser, waiting for it to pop. Many people wear masks. Most do not. Everyone is dressed down, with t-shirts emblazoned as much with BLM and Eracism as American flags and bald eagles. We sit around the geyser’s sulfurous bump, waiting, and when it starts to blow everyone ooohs or aahs and then we watch as it shoots up into the blue sky. When it drops back down, we all clap and hoot, thousands of us, cheering at this remarkable natural spectacle. Afterwards, we all walk back to our vehicles and go along our way.
Waiting for Old Faithful
Losing the Bold and the Brave in Yosemite
El Capitan
Yosemite Valley
21 – 24 July
Elevation: 3900 feet/1,200 meters, with ups and downs in-between
Perfect weather
John Muir, mentioned earlier, is mythical. He embodied the best of the West: curiosity, determination, and pure grit. After living abroad for nearly 15 years and with another three tacked on in DC, I sometimes forget that the Western United States is a place of pioneers and cowboys, of people who almost eagerly looked for ways to push the limits. Muir sits at the acme of this spirit.
People risked all to get to California. The Southwest, while littered with amazing natural canyons, is desolate, literally. To cross these lands people needed to not only have determination and grit but also a lot of luck. Many failed. We learned of the Donner Party in school, a group of pioneers that found themselves trapped in the High Sierras over a winter and that succumbed to cannibalism to survive. Still, people made the trek. They came in covered wagons, fighting with the indigenous tribes, the climate, and themselves, just to try to forge a better life. People kept coming. We learned about the people who flooded California during the gold rush and how San Francisco leapt back after the earthquake and great fire of 18 April 1906. And, we learned about John Muir.
Half Dome
Muir was a founder of the Sierra Club and many credit him, along with Teddy Roosevelt, as the father of the national park service. He wrote: “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, and avalanches; but he cannot save them from fools—only Uncle Sam can do that." His was a time when Government was meant to do things and often did. (His “A Wind Storm in the Forests” is included below and well worth the read.) He was from Indianapolis and, early on, worked as a machinist. He gave that up quickly and then walked to Florida, whose swamps and coasts were a draw to the adventurist. He ended up on a boat to Cuba, and then up to New York, and then on a train across the divide to San Francisco. He took a look around the place and then set out on foot to Yosemite Valley. As he said: “I could have been a millionaire, but I chose to be a tramp.” In Yosemite, his inspiration came into bloom. His writing is detailed and often funny but what leaps out is the pure joy he felt within nature’s embrace.
Nevada Falls
Yosemite today is riddled with signs of do’s and don’ts. It isn’t simply around Covid. Signs for social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, etc. are all around and people here, in the most part, follow the guidelines. But there are so many other signs of more dubious providence. They tell people to stay off this, to stay on that, to not climb here, to beware of animals there.
They were not here when I was a kid. They have sprouted up along with all the other fears that have gripped Americans. Covid is just the latest. Americans have been emotionally unmoored since September 11th when the myth of a grand America was shattered. The latest manifestation of this is the “Karen,” slang for the white middle-aged mother who constantly scolds her children, keeping them in an artificial bubble where, she hopes, they will be safe. Those of us who live here know the high-pitched authoritative shriek/command. The ‘Karen’ controls what they do, where they go, how they play, what they wear, what they eat and, to their best efforts, what they think. With Covid, the “Karen” has found the reason to exert maximum control. Of course, this runs up against the notions of the vagabond Muir, the man who climbed a tree during a storm just to experience the exhilaration of strong winds.
Vernal Falls
We hiked up the steps past Vernal Falls and to the stronger Nevada Falls that drop near the round side of Half Dome. I hadn’t made this hike since I was around 10 or 11. I had a memory that there was a swimming hole at the top and yet was wary of promising it to the kids. It is a good hike, a climb of about 900 meters, and just enough to challenge the casual hiker. When we got to the top, I was so happy to see that my memory was true. The river flowed over a crop of rocks and into a large basin before being squeezed again through granite slabs and over the falls. My kids leapt in. I even dove in, using a bit of youthful exuberance to ignore the depth. The water was cold but tolerable and Elena rushed up to the rocks where there was a flute of white water that carried her down into the pool. My brother’s daughter was still on the shore and I looked at her, and then at her parents, and soon enough she and my brother were in the water as well. There was so much in that brief pause, in the moment between fear and joy, between simply saying fuck it and jumping in.
“A Wind Storm in the Forests.” John Muir
THE mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells; they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result.
After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have fallen upon them since they were first planted,--hail, to break the tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,--while the manifest result of all this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement whatsoever.
There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten ledges like eagles' claws, while their lithe, cord-like branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers--the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce--are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than 200 feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long, horizontal arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algæ in a brook; while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height, while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it is distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots.
While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra, and when we have explored the forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have made them so.
There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their varied waterlike flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all its grandeur.
One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes; some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the hilltops. The madronños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots with a motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad excitement.
I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees,--Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,--and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way,--singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures,--manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada, and the Carolinas, and Florida, are made up of trees that resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms. But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects indescribably glorious.
Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Æolian music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another was branchless to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobo-link on a reed.
In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more severely tried--bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows--without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break up suddenly into a kind of beaten foam, and again, after chasing one another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and disappear on some hillside, like sea-waves on a shelving shore. The quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery splendor.
Excepting only the shadows there was nothing somber in all this wild sea of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season, the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf--all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.
The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to fine advantage, so that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors, and the way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but rather an invincible gladness as remote from exultation as from fear.
I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered by the way.
Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulse and tangle far inland, where it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion, and while in Florida, far from the coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated.
Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains, marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long, tranquil reaches--after thus learning their language and forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods.
We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much.
When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto you."
As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so called ruin of the storm was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal.
Home, Family, and Covid
Santa Cruz surfers abide by the mask.
Santa Cruz and San Francisco
17 – 21 July
Sea level—mostly
Foggy and chilly in the morning; hot in the afternoon--typical summer weather along the northern coast of California
I spent the bulk of my youth and college years in the San Francisco Bay Area. If any place is home, it is here. From surfers and punks in Santa Cruz to the mesmerizing Low Riders of east San Jose; from the stranded hippies in the Haight to the mighty Oakland rappers; from the politically active students in Berkeley to the start-up hungry students at Stanford. These were all part of my youth, in one way or another, amongst so much more. The Bay Area defines the tapestry, the smorgasbord, the fric and frac that make up America.
We careened our way up the PCH, passing Aptos and Capitola and then turning into Santa Cruz. The coastline conifers’ sharp fragrance mixes with the faint smell of salt from the chilly ocean. Middle-class homes are tucked closely together, marked with driftwood sculptures, sea-shell clad signs, peeling paint, and roughly strewn lawns. Old men with long grey curls skateboard down East Cliff Drive. A few teenage girls carry boards toward the end of 41st Avenue. Of course, the Giant Dipper, the largest wooden roller coaster in the West, is silent as are all the other rides along the Boardwalk. It is July in Santa Cruz and yet there are very few people coming over the hill for a day at the beach. We rolled down the windows and slowed down, in no hurry as we had already arrived.
Surf. I was never very good at surfing although I really, really, tried. A lot. I had friends who were very good and because of this, I always felt like I was tagging along with them rather than being one with them. That’s kind of why I am surprised that these guys remain friends. We pass messages on FB and share highlights of our lives. We grieve over missed friends. They remind me that, somewhere very deep, we remain and always will be brothers. I’m grateful if gobsmacked.
Some of them still surf, having moved to southern beaches where the waves are more predictable and the water warmer. I understand this and yet the ocean in Northern California, with its chilled Alaskan current, it’s clumps of seaweed, and the bobbling heads of sea lions in the wake, make it both heartier and more part of the earth than the southern currents.
While I never mastered surfing, the knowledge, respect, and love I have for the ocean is profound. I know it, how it moves and breaks, how to let the current pull me in the right direction, how to duck dive and skate through breakers to the mounds that shift upwards to form sheer faces of water-bound joy. Dante and Elena are learning all of this now. Elena is already standing and doesn’t have a speck of timidity in good sized surf. For this trip, Dante was set on standing up. He had gained confidence in the rough break of Assateague back in Maryland and he loved the perfectly curling waves of San Onofre. We had driven up to Steamers Lane, the mythical surf sport just next to the tiny Santa Cruz Lighthouse that now houses a surfing museum. The surf that day wasn’t very big, but he got a sense of the powerful peaks that could rip past this point in the jagged California coastline. He couldn’t’ take his eyes off the sets.
Dante, headed out again . . .
We went down to Manrea State beach, a wide sandy swathe with a fair break that, on that morning, was breaking 2 – 3 foot; not very much but enough for an 11-year-old. He grabbed my board and went back and forth, in an out, trying, trying, trying. I left him alone. He needed to find his own way. He punched and grabbed at the breaks. He’d try to get in position, only to have the wave crash on top of him or to roll under him, leaving him behind the break and ill prepared for the next set. He kept trying. And then, on a puckish little wave with nice curls of white beneath him he STOOD. After that, it was impossible to get him out of the water. He is a surfer and always will be.
After Santa Cruz, we continued up the PCH to San Francisco where we stayed with my brother and his family. He brought home a cast of crabs and made a feast, accompanied with fresh artichokes. We dipped great slabs of both in melted butter and talked about family and Corona. We took a walk along Ocean Beach, under the dense patch of fog that seems permanently pinned to this part of the city. I quoted Mark Twain’s line—the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco—too often.
San Francisco had +4,000 Covid cases at the time. It was enough to keep most people at home. Helen, my brother’s wife, fretted over her parents, old and hard Russians, he with all kinds of ailments and she with the brawn of a thousand women. They lived upstairs and yet she hadn’t visited in several weeks. This was my brother’s insistence. Helen’s sister, brasher and without an insistent boyfriend in tow, visited her parents often. I told my brother of an NPR story that talked about the same story: a grandmother whose daughter hadn’t visited at all during the pandemic but whose son visited often, bringing the grandchildren along. The grandmother explained that she didn’t tell her daughter, preferring not to worry her. My bother snorted, taking it as an afront when I meant it as another example of the magical thinking we’ve all adopted during this time.
After San Francisco, we then went down to his big house in San Jose. Justin has a passion for projects—for finding tricks and trades to refinish, retouch, rebuild, improvise and improve, the last being a bit of a question in his case. Like many who engage in DIY, the projects can take over the home, one cascading into the next, with the detritus of it all left in piles all around the place. He wanted praise about it all, even though he implored us to tell him what we really thought. Silvia was effusive and glowing and even though he could see through her enthusiasm, it made him feel better. I, of course, told my little brother what I really thought—that it was a mess and that it all seemed half-assed. It’s been a bit frosty ever sense.
Families are hard. We steer into each other because we can, because we have to/should be there for each other, and because we know each other best. Yet, the older I get the more I recognize how flimsy the interactions are—the bonds are strong, but all of the other stuff is like meek Jello. We don’t know how to chill out and let it form into something more than sinuous links and more like a real relationship. Covid hasn’t helped. It has separated and divided families so that we are living in ever diminishing pods, more and more alone.
Surf, Trains, and Desperate LA
San Onfre at sunset
San Onofre & LA
14 – 16 July
Sea level
Cool and breezy; bless the mighty Pacific Ocean
San Onofre was always a wild card. It had been nearly impossible to find appropriate camping sites in California. Most of the state beaches were closed because of COVID and other options were pretty dodgy. The California coast has always been a bastion for the wayward, people who lost their way elsewhere and ventured West, happy to literally set up camp on the beaches of Southern California when all else failed. Who could blame them? Yet, the idea of bringing the family into a campsite where drugs and despair were rampant wasn’t in the spirt of this particular safari.
San Onofre is famous for two reasons. First, it is a famous surf spot with a number of classic beach breaks (San Onofre SB; Trestles; Old Man). Second, a nuclear power plant was constructed right on the beach in the early 1970s. The plant was decommissioned in 2012 but it still stands there, its two ominous concrete domes plopped right down in the middle of glistening sand and surf. For some reason, I kept remembering the Saturday Night Live skit that portrayed President Jimmy Carter’s visit to the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. I was betting on the surf.
San Onofre campsite; looking away from the train
The camp itself was fine. Our neighbors were COVID sensitive and a mix of surfers and other campers fleeing the weight of the times. Just next to us were a group of women in their 50s/60s who got together every few months to escape their husbands and to surf. They were cool. When Silvia described her work at the World Bank, their focus was always on whether there was surf in the places she had visited. There were a group of nurses who had finally gotten a bit of time off and decided to camp on the beach and surf. Some lonely dude with a massive camper. All in all they were fine and while the nurses were throwing gasoline on their fire pit at night, they were happy to let all be all.
What was not cool was the bloody-fucking freight trains that rambled by during the night. This was unbelievable to me. The noise! It sounded like they were carrying cattle off to the slaughterhouse, a deep, ominous, LOUD “MOOOOOOOOOOO,” fractured only slightly by the squeal of metal against metal—loud and LONG motherfucking trains. There was one of these beasts at 3 am. 3AM!!! AND, all these otherwise friendly and cool people seemed oblivious to these rail-beasts. By 6 or 7 they were out, doing yoga, making coffee, and peacefully getting ready for the day. Were they all deaf or drunk?
I couldn’t figure it out, except that the surf was amazing. The water was warm—no suits just baggy shorts and our boards. Slow, perfect mounds gliding toward shore, around 3 – 5 foot our first morning. The kids were dumbstruck and pleaded that we stay there for the rest of the trip. We managed to stay for two nights. From San Onofre, we spent a day hitting the sights around LA.
Empty and sad . . .
Venice Beach, always a weird stew of beach bums, muscle maestros, LSD hazed hippies, tourists, and other colorful and fascinating riff raff, was nearly empty. It was left with the tragically homeless and the drug-wracked, minus any uplifting color or tourist gawkers. Covid had left it barren so that the dirt and grime eclipsed any remnant of the gaudy and the bizarre. The homeless and addicted sat on blankets or wandered aimlessly along the promenade, having given up any pretense about their condition or their place on these hard-stained streets. The basketball courts, always a buzz of leaping and laughing athletes, had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. The shops and restaurants, about a quarter of which were open, smelled of urine and had a barrage of warning signs about social distancing and masks. We moved on quickly, not ready for the face of American poverty that has always been there but that is usually masked by the so-called art of commerce.
Cordoned off basketball courts at Venice Beach
From Venice Beach, bizarrely, we went first to Santa Monica pier with its art deco neon sign (not lit) and then up into Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Beverly Hills was relatively deserted, a few super cars and a pair of cops who checked the plates on our outer space like camper trailer. Elena stopped to take a picture against the “pink wall,” a site of various quasi-celebrity shots. Now it was empty, just a concrete wall painted hastily pink to counter the harsh yellow sunlight of Southern California. The “Walk of Fame” in Hollywood was void of most tourists; more homeless people unlucky and stranded. We caught a quick glimpse of the Hollywood sign and when I asked if we should circle around for a better look, no one responded. We quickly ascended the ramp onto the 101 freeway, heading north. After an hour or so we reached Highway 1, the “Pacific Coast Highway” (PCH), that meanders its way up the coast, crossing between rolling hills, Spanish style towns, and the long beaches that epitomize Southern California. We watched all this landscape, happy that it was free of the people we had seen across LA who were lost and dazed by the impact of COVID.
Rain’s steady carves and mother’s mighty acts
Paria Canyon
12 -13 July
Elevation: 3,084 ft/940m
Hot; 102f/39c
Paria Canyon is considered one of the longest slot canyons in the world at around 42 miles. Slot Canyons, or Wadis, which is how I’ve always known them given my expeditions in the Middle East, are narrow slots in otherwise flat plains. Rain slides across these plains like marbles on a steel plate, pouring into these slots and quickly forming a torrent of water that carves the stone deeper into the earth. They say that a ¼ inch of rain on the desert plain can result in a 3-foot flood of water in a slot canyon. These flash floods rip and carve through the stone like lightning cutting through a midnight sky.
Paria Canyon is made of Navajo Limestone, yellow and gold rock whose walls have lines and carves that mimic the flow of water that made them. Antelope Canyon, nearby, is more famous. This is because Paria Canyon is less welcoming. You need to commit to a hearty hike in +100-degree weather, with scorpions and rattle snakes, and then pitch a tent somewhere and hope that coyotes don’t rob you of your food while you sleep. I was committed. Call it another late middle-aged man’s bucket list.
Of course, I decided to do this with my brother, his 10-year-old daughter, and Dante, my 11-year-old son. Weirdly, I had sent various posts about Paria to my brother and his wife at least a month previously and had talked about it incessantly with Silvia during all of our planning. Yet, the facts only really dawned on them the morning of, as we ascended from the pleasant conifer forest around Jacob Lake and onto the stark desert plain of northern Arizona and southern Utah. This is a sun-blasted land more reminiscent of the landscape on Mars than any earthly abode. This other worldly landscape is what sparked the mama freak out. They found a blog that talked about the rattle snakes in the canyon that had pictures of the snakes coiled up along the canyon floor. The mamas sought out helicopter emergency services, despite the fact that we would have absolutely no signal in the canyon. They worried about injuries, heat stroke, dehydration, more about the damn rattle snakes, and were mustering all motherly spirt necessary to shut this little endeavor down. Somehow, I got them on the trail, which they could join us for the first hour or so.
While they were never at ease, this first bit of the hike includes a glorious slot along the Wire Pass where the light strikes different parts of the 50-foot walls. The whole crew were suddenly calmed and awed by the play of light and color. They were still worried, but they understood why it was special to hike down this special place.
This was not without some calamity. My brother dropped his tent somewhere along the line and Silvia, Helen, and Elena found it when they were trekking back to the car without us. After a ricochet of decision making between them, they decided to get it back to us—they knew where our campsite would be. When Elena—all strength and stamina—arrived with the tent, it was like a small miracle. And, off she went, back up the Wire Pass slot, leaving us with the falling sun and dawning night, alone with the canyon and stars. If anything, this episode was all testament to the power of woman—the ability to be highly emotional and highly decisive and strong and quick all at the same time. I don’t want to fall too much into gendered meanderings but most men’s modus operandi is to push the emotion down, to become stoic and strong, like movie heroes, and then to act. We men try to dim the emotion when the emotion is really the driver for the most courageous acts.
Canyons & Crowns
The colors of Zion may be true . . .
Zion National Park
10 July
Elevation: 5,900 ft/2,800m
Hot above the canyon; fresh in the Narrows
Zion National Park and its canyon remained suspicious to me. The photos were too grand, too colorful, too other worldly. Of course, our vistas didn’t match those perfectly composed photos, but the colors are simply glorious. The canyon walls jut up, draped in florific ochres, reaching up to the sky like they own it.
Zion Canyon
The park was crowded and I felt that the throngs of young people were carriers of all kinds of disease, including Covid. We went hiking up the Narrows, a place where the canyon curves and turns into a proper slot canyon, with the Virgin River running along its rocky bottom. Remember, these places, Zion, the Virgin River, were named by a Mormon explorer, Nephi Johnson, who made friends with the locals, the Paiute. They call the area Mukuntuweap which sounds much cooler than ‘Zion’, when you say it a few times, but it is also a bit unimaginative and inaccurate—it means ‘straight canyon.’ I wonder what the Paiute were comparing it with? In any case, there were no Paiute there today, so far as I could tell. It was dudes and dudettes punching their way through the shallow currents, most un-masked and oblivious, standing around in crowds and challenging each other to various feats.
My brother, who has gone through his own Covid hell for the last three months, was furious, telling people who walked by to wear masks and taking various routes to try to avoid the crowds. He snapped at his daughter, us, them, the world. He was right, of course, but it is also one of those Gordian knots associated with Covid: you weigh various risks and then decide to do what you want in any case. This is what these kids were doing here and, really, across the Sun Belt where Covid has spiked in recent weeks. They decided to say screw the risks and to do what they want, flaunting flimsy justifications as they pounded their chests and jumped into swirling canyon pools.
My brother trying to lead the way amongst the throngs.
We weren’t that far off from these kids. We didn’t decide to leave the Narrows immediately, draping ourselves in masks and hand sanitizer. We worked our way up the canyon for a good five hours, trying to avoid the crowds and the noxious passers-by, but we didn’t stop what we wanted to do with our day in the glorious Zion.
Covid-19 is devastating lives around the world. It is also a mighty lesson for how to cope with diseases that we can’t’ control, do not understand, and that threaten our lives in so many ways. It is mother nature’s ways of ‘tsk-tsking’ us that we have become too self-centered, too ignorant, too selfish. We need to live with this and other diseases. This does not mean barricading ourselves in our homes and never partaking in the glories of the world. It means being more aware and respectful of the impact we have on others, of recognizing how much is enough, of thinking about the consequences of our actions, of being, dare I say, better humanitarians.
The planet’s grand arches
The Delicate Arch
Moab, Utah
6 – 8 July
Elevation: 4,026 feet/1,227 meters
Weather: HOT! 103f/39c
When I was a kid I dreamed of Moab and the surrounding red rock landscape. It was the place of high desert wildness. It still is and yet development—hotels and fancy restaurants—are starting to push up around the ATVs, jeeps, darkly tanned climbers. No matter. On this last night, we are dusty, crusty, and exhausted.
We planned this trip because of the chance to get out into nature. We needed to escape the physical and intellectual confinements of Covid-19. Nature was and remains our sanctuary. We came to be in some of the planet’s mightiest of cathedrals, to be where the wisdom of the earth and the simplicity of the human race combine, stretching into her glory, coming to recognize that we are not even shadows in the history of this planet. We are mere passengers.
The great stone arches have been carved by wind. Just imagine how long the wind pushes up against these stones to slowly, slowly pull away mere particles of sand until these elegant spires are revealed. These arches span millennia and yet they look spritely, like they are in the midst of a grande jeté and will then glide across the desert landscape, dancing their way into the sheath of stars that twinkle for them every night.
Park Avenue
People are here. Most wear masks and you can see the rugged styles that pervade a place like Moab. They are all buffs, pulled up from the neck, covering smugly and like this was the most normal thing to wear whilst hiking here. They still race around on their ATVs, scrambling over rocks and up the curves of aches for the best spot, wind torn and high, like all else.
Landscape Arch
We were in general agreement about the arches. We hiked Park Avenue, Delicate Arch, Windows, Double Arch, Ribbon Arch, and Landscape Arch. Delicate Arch was the mightiest, sat above a curved stadium of stone where the wind howled up and around as if the arch were her conductor. A black crow hovered just above us for a while until it found its own perch, so much better than ours. Landscaper Arch, we agreed, was the most moving, its great expanse pulled tight as if the stone was taught rope, holding the rest of the earth in place.
Swimming in the Colorado River
The kids blossomed here. They hiked and swam (the Colorado River where we found a local’s beach the favorite) and climbed and took photos and bragged to their friends and when we got back to camp today, we devoured sausages, sliced tomatoes and mozzarella. Now, I sit under the great expanse of stars, happy and sunburned, thinking that all of this may actually make sense.
Drive Day
Amarillo, Texas
5 July
Elevation: 3,605 feet
Weather: Nice evening breeze; cool
On the road . . .
Today was a drive day. We started from the banks of the Mississippi and ended up right dab in the middle of the Texas panhandle. Even drove through the small town of Panhandle. In the end we drove 715 miles/1,151 kilometers.
We passed over the rolling hills and lakes of Arkansas, just south of the Ozarks, made infamous in a recent Netflix show. We drove past Little Rock and I talked about the Little Rock Nine, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Clintons, especially how bright and quick Bill Clinton is/was. The kids listened, if passively. They were more enthralled by the news that Kanye West is making a run for the presidency.
After Arkansas, we rolled through Oklahoma the long way. We broke into the song from the eponymous musical when crossing the border. Funny how the song now screeches out as a song about invasion, conquering, and the glee of taking over a land from the Pawenee, Seneca, Cherokees, and other indigenous tribes:
“They couldn't pick a better time to start in life,
It ain't too early and it ain't too late.
Startin' as a farmer with a brand-new wife
Soon be livin' in a brand-new state!
Brand-new state
Gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley,
Carrots and pertaters
Pasture fer the cattle
Spinach and termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom
Plen'y of air and plen'y of room
Plen'y of room to swing a rope,
Plen'y of heart and plen'y of hope.
Oklahoma,
Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain.”
The land was laid out bare for these happy, frolicking famers and their new wives. Now the indigenous peoples of Oklahoma ‘stay’ on ‘reservations’; such an odd American moniker, like they will someday get a seat at a good restaurant. I saw a few Trump signs but not as many as in Tennessee. Mostly, I just saw poverty and another broken American promise.
Wearing a mask against Covid.
These long drives bring out the family cocoon aspect of this journey. We sang and talked, listened to music and podcasts, snacked here and there. We pulled our mobile habitat beside a lake somewhere in Arkansas for lunch and then in the far reaches of Oklahoma, sitting over a broad empty field with a dancing evening sky for dinner. Lunch meats, mozzarella, fried chicken, and fair day-old bread. It was glorious.
Somewhere in Oklahoma . . .
The fight for civil rights and the rockets’ faint glare
Room 306, Lorraine Motel, Memphis, TN
Along the Mississippi River Near Memphis TN
July 4
Elevation: 837 feet
Weather: Muggy. Hot.
We booked out of the campsite at just before 5:00 to make our way to Memphis. I managed to get tickets for the National Civil Rights Museum that is housed in the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We made it, if a bit crusty and tired.
The outside of the museum is eerily the same as the photo, with Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy pointing toward the sounds of the gunfire, the great man crumpled at their feet. I always admired Jackson and remember his runs for the presidency.
The civil rights movement of the 60s, of course, is part of another long arc, reaching back to Dred Scott and up to the BLM leaders. The logo for the museum is of a figure pushing against a great stone wall—the fight is hard and long.
I was as much interested in the families milling about outside, waiting for ticket times to be called. They were mostly black; a dozen or so families lined up. There were two white families, including ours. People stood beneath Room 306 where MLK was killed, taking photos, reading the placards. They have replicas of the white dodge with green flares and long white Cadillac parked below room 306. If the national parks were/are ensconced in white history, this place was certainly part of black America’s history.
Dr. King was killed at the Loraine Motel on 4 April 1968; 14 days before I was born. Another link hard for me to pin down. It makes me think of my mother who was all parts hippie, marching and dressing me in American flag diapers. She instilled activism in me very young. As Dr. King instructed us, we all have a duty to fight against injustice otherwise our country’s ideals will always remain just that.
I was happy we made it to the Museum, especially on the 4th of July. We all tried to come up with a good link between the two but mostly failed. The 4th of July celebrates independence (or it should) and yet it also stands as a moment in American history when some declared freedom from Britain while others remained enslaved. A comic on the radio said it was easier for African Americans to have selective amnesia around things like 4th of July celebrations. I think we all need some amnesia regarding this country. It can produce some of the most stunning heroes of our time, like Dr. King, while also allowing horrifying bigotry and ignorance. I made the mistake of switching on NPR after visiting the Museum and Scott Simon, whose voice is the embodiment of mellifluous, was describing Trump’s 4th of July speech—all filled with hate and fear mongering. How do we untangle all the wonderfully spectacular threads that make up America when they can get so buried in such pure shit?
Now we are at an RV park along the Mississippi River. It is very pleasant, with a breeze and all the RVs backed up right onto the river. I got the kids some fireworks. We’ll light them off and probably chat with some of our neighbors here. The sparks will light up over this old river and we’ll all think of America.
Dante with the Mississippi flowing behind him
History & Parks
Smokemont Campground, Smoky Mountains National Park
July 2, 3 (Days 2 & 3)
Elevation: 2,200 feet
Weather: Nice and hot during day; cozy in your sleeping bags at night
America’s national parks are gems in its crooked national crown. Teddy Roosevelt, with his rough riding and long walks with befuddled foreign dignitaries in tow, is the father of the park system, or at least from the president’s office. He established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments on over 230 million acres of public land.
I always think of John Muir who lashed himself to one of the highest branches of one of the tallest redwoods he could find and then sat there during a lightning storm, being tossed back and forth like a top at sea. My kind of guy, or more accurately, I was enthralled by him and his stories as a youth and so he was the guy I’ve always wanted to be.
Camping in this country’s great wilderness goes even further back, to Henry David Thoreau, and his sparse cabin at Walden Pond where he divined some of this country’s greatest verse. Farther back still, to the settler/invaders, carried across the Atlantic in scurvy infested boats, onto the shores of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where they failed miserably for a while, spreading germs and so much else to the new world. In any case, they were a type of camper as well.
As I look around this campsite, I’m reminded of just how white that history is. I don’t see any brown or black skin here beneath the trees, with multi-colored tents sprouted up like wild mushrooms. A friend of mine studied this: that African Americans don’t tend to camp or go to the national parks because they don’t see it as part of their history, their culture. This seems about right. America is strapped up by these historical paths, with different people pretty much staying in their lanes. Shame, because being out in nature like this is a gift that everyone should have a chance to enjoy.
I seem to remember that this is changing; that the parks have tried to be more inclusive in placards and historical notes. It is also such a broad generalization that, while still compelling, it needs to be nuanced by the counter examples like Wayne who I met at a camper store. Wayne is from Georgia (but not Atlanta) and has a thick southern accent; lots of “ya’ alls” and the like. He was gearing up for a camping trip to the Smoky Mountains as well. He had a big white F-150 (I refuse to translate what that is for my foreign friends), a camper, and was bursting and grinning about getting up into the woods. He was going up for a week with his family. He was going to hike, make campfires, roast marshmallows. He was ready to go. He was a camper. Just like me and so he had found a way to tangle himself into that history and enjoy the great outdoors, despite the fact that even the parks had neglected his history and his place in this country.
Covid. Well, there are no rangers about. Usually you have to sit in line at the ranger station where they tell you which campsite is yours, warn you about the bears, and generally keep order. No one at the station. Just a printed sheet of white paper informing people to go directly to their campsite. No one is wearing masks, but each campsite is separated by at least 30 feet. Silvia used the bathrooms and so I decided to as well. Then I told her that maybe we should be more careful, bringing the bucket of wipes with us and wiping everything down before we do our business. She then told me that she didn’t touch anything but the door handle, squatting, surely elegantly, to do her biz. With mixed up parents like this, who knows what the kids have been doing . . .
First days and no sways
Home…
First days are always a bit of a tease, whether with the lusted other or hurdling down a Virginia highway on the first day of a 30 day road trip. We were flirting with all kinds of things. We decided to leave an afternoon early, put in 3 ½ hours on the road, testing our mobile habitat, and then working on systems while ensconced in a friendly KOA.
All went well except the nerves are frayed, for all of us. I’m barking, Silvia’s glaring, and the kids are burrowed into their screens. Not quite the idyl. After carefully weighing every last morsel that went into the Cricket (our abode), I was still super worried about the dreaded highway sway where the trailer can rock back and forth, gain momentum, and, as most described to me, end in quite a smash up at 60 miles per hour. This worry of sway amped me up—”We’ll get through this alive, Baby!” Silvia shuddered at the ridiculousness of it all beside me. All for naught; it went fine.
The KOA is pleasant; tucked in the trees and rolling hills characteristic of southern Virginia. It is also the land of the camping behemoths: the 50-foot long mobile apartments, trimmed in brown formica and plastic fixtures, equipped with TVs, stereos, air conditioners, indoor showers and fully functioning commodes. I’m jealous of the last, I must admit. Several families have walked by, asking us how we can all sleep in something so small. They are friendly and have that swingy Virginian accent that mixes north and south along with the tones from all the surrounding civil war battlegrounds.
The kids have wandered off. That’s the best part of the KOA. They explore and meet, even if masked and at a distance, a new level of teen ritual.
Tomorrow off to the Smoky Mountains . . .
Other people’s homes.
Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together.
Westward bound…
The road trip is a historical rite in America. From slapstick movies to the Freedom Riders, pioneers to Thelma and Louise, people in this country have taken to the road to determine the contours of its unfathomable vastness.
The expanse widens across endless landscapes, mountains and plains, rivers and powerful oceans, and across the cultures and identities that reflect the tangled diversity that has always swelled the American dream well beyond its bloodied sutures. We all live here and yet what we’re doing together is dumbfounding. We’ve never been a melting pot and if we are instead a tapestry, as our best selves sometimes contend, we sure the hell are tattered.
There are no inevitable truths in America. Only more questions. Yet, America is going camping this summer and we’re going along for the ride.
“Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate here in my bag . . .
Cathy, I'm lost, I said although I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America.”
Simon & Garfunkel
Eastward bound . . .