March 28^th. Last Day.

I thought more about what I wrote yesterday about the Phd dissertation—delving into the relationship between ultra-right, religiosity and having no natural landscape features to orient by. That might be interesting, were it not for the fact that my own states of Utah and Wyoming are strewn with obvious and unique features—mountain ranges, sandstone walls and canyons—yet both exhibit seriously conservative governments and Mormonism is front and center in all Utah’s political, social, and philosophical dialogue. I’m starting to realize that as I watch the same problems I’ve been thinking about for decades grow even amid mounting evidence that a) wilderness is important; and b) the climate is warming; it’s our fault; and we can do something about it, the chasm between those representing the two sides to these issues also grows. Which doesn't make any sense. Hence, my propensity to make this make sense. Perhaps that is the lesson I learned driving across America: some important things can't and won't ever make sense. Which may be why those with more experience and sense than I have spend all their effort building the case for what they feel in their hearts to be right, hoping to bring others to their side. This comes as a harsh but important reality.

.

My last night on the road, I stayed with great friends, Bill and Sue, in Ripton, VT in their solar house. On the way I passed three huge fields of solar panels within twenty miles, which says a lot about Vermont. Bill told me that there's some growing animosity among residents of Rutland VT, etc. who don't like how the solar panels 'look'. We also talked about the continuing problem in Dartmouth fraternities (a boy going through Hell week was recently hospitalized with an infection after the Greek letters branded into his buttocks became infected--I found this). And how, if money isn't taken out of politics our species might be headed to a third, major population bottleneck.  Winter has yet to vacate this high part of Vermont and the Middlebury Ski area is still very active. 

As for roadkill, I saw three deer within a half-mile in the Interstate 89 median just north of the Sharon exit. The hind quarter of one had been scavanged and its pelvis was exposed. The other two could have been sleeping, but I know they weren't. During my drive, I saw one other road killed deer, a few coyotes, the dog I mentioned, many squirrels, but  dead domestic cats and opossums were the car-killed animals I encountered most.

Seeing the road-killed deer made me think about road-side memorials and how I hadn't seen one for awhile, as if people don't do that in Vermont. Again, I'm generalizing and my mind whirrs off to try making some sense of that. Which immediately sent me back to one of the last memorials I saw...a white cross in Pennsylvania,  inlaid with red, a girls name carved into the cross piece (I think it said "Nikki"). A scalloped border had been carved or routed along the edge of both the upright and the cross piece and I wondered what David (Foster Wallace) would write about that. I think he would write about the boy, Jeff, who made it for his friend Nikki. How Nikki was driving that rainy, dark night. They were both on their phones, texting other friends. They'd been 'away' to the season's last football game. They weren't boyfriend/girlfriend, although had it been up to Jeff they would have been. Three other friends were asleep in the back at the curve which Nikki wasn't ready for. She drove through the pitiful guard rail and car, her father's 2003 Nissan, rolled up the hill. Nikki wasn't wearing her seat belt because she worried it might wrinkle her shirt, and was thrown out. In shock, the others were barely scratched as they stood over Nikki, whose invisible injuries made her seem like she was sleeping. Jeff hadn't, until the cross a month after Nikki's funeral (the whole school and the whole town turned out) been at all interested in wood shop. His projects were all  pathetic, never the planned size because he couldn't plane a piece of wood at right angles if his life depended on it. Mr. James, the shop teacher, thought that if it took the death of his friend to get him to take shop seriously, so be it. The two of them worked together on the cross, during the three-day/week class, but after, as well. They were both proud of how it turned out, Jeff, the right angles and the routed scallop, and Mr. James the way the paint they'd picked brought out Nikki's name where he hoped people could see it as they made that turn going 60 mph.

I got through two of seven sections of Infinite Jest, before something I did, or a defect in the audio book made getting the rest of it to download impossible. I'm hooked on it, and can imagine buying the book and actually reading the rest of it while I'm here.

Tallying up, I found that in six and a half days, I drove  2633 miles, averaging just over 376 miles per day. On gas, food, and lodging I spent $664, about the price of a round trip plane ticket. Which, if that's what I spend driving back in late May, we'll still save about $1K by not needing a rental car. That's if I don't count the value of what I could have been doing during those days I spent on the road. What if nothing, no matter what I would have been paid for it, would have been more valuable than those six days across America? 

I feel dull and tired tonight but I'm sure that once I clear the road from my mind, I'll wonder more about all I've seen.

March 27 A.M. Port Matilda, PA

Trying to keep in shape has been a challenge. Sitting solid for 6-8 hours is one thing, but not walking is another. I’m sure that this much time on my butt has taken years off of my life. Does gaining meaning or understanding add years? I’m not sure. If it does, what new meaning or understanding do I have? Although the true value of this trip will gradually and over time secrete into my consciousness, I do feel that I understand our political divisions a bit better—the strong hold of the religious right as proportional to the availability of significant natural landforms to aid in special orientation. (Now there’s a PhD dissertation.)

I just found this about Indiana.

 As for exercise:

Day 1: Nada

Day 2: 200 kettlebell swings (100/50/50) (I’m travelling with my 45 pounder.)

Day 3: Body weight 3 sets of 30 Full body extensions/30 close grip pushups/30 prisoner squats. Plus walk (Although I didn’t ask it to, my I-phone, I discovered keeps track) 11,111 steps/4.73 miles in The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Day 4: Nada

Day 5: Body weight three sets Alternating Prisoner Lunge (8/side)/Triple Stop Pushup/full body extensions (20)/ Mountain Climber (10/side). Then 3 sets  of Burpee (20 secs), rest 10 secs/Plank (20 secs), rest 10 secs

Day 6 (today) Nada so far. Perhaps some squats and extensions.

Two days ago, it occurred to me how few dogs I’d seen and then only in one Indiana town (three mangy looking mongrels in a fenced mud yard and across the street, a large dark dog chained to a tall pole.)  Then soon after leaving the North Vernon Comfort Suites (my first room with a plastic card instead of a key) in the rain I passed a dead dog on the roadside. I drove on for a mile thinking about that dog, now few dogs I’d seen, if anyone knew about that dog’s death. Then I turned around thinking that if that was one of my dogs (Rio or Winslow) dead on the side of the road, I’d want to know about it. I pulled up along side it, turned on my emergency blinkers, and got out, traffic (three cars and an ice cream delivery truck) whizzing by. The dog was a beautiful pit bull, that dark brown/reddish brown  color. It didn’t budge when I nudged it with my foot, so it’d been there a while. It was already on the grass so I didn’t need to move it. It had no collar. Optimistically, I figured that the people living in the house on whose lawn the dead dog laid, took the collar inside, made the hard call, and were waiting for the dog’s owners to show up.

I’d spent some time earlier map reading and realized that I needed to abandon Highway 50 for a northern route if I was keep my schedule. Just before noon, it was with some regret and hesitation that I entered Interstate 275 just outside of Cincinnati,

with Pittsburg the next waypoint on my path. I hadn’t gone five miles when I passed a road-killed coyote (I’ve been keeping track of road kills and road side monuments hand-made by the loved ones of people killed in accidents).  I’d been on two-lane roads winding through woods and at times along streams and hadn’t seen a dead coyote (raccoons/ cats/ squirrel/many, many, many opossums), and now, the first time on an Interstate a dead coyote. This sighting didn't seem to impact my opinion of Interstates, as David (Foster Wallace) and I drove north. Interstate highways are built to get people and goods from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Yet they seemed designed to control us. They often seem to have built higher than the surrounding areas. You can't just stop to look if you see something to look at--you need to wait until they think it's oK to exit. They've crammed the exit areas with franchised businesses and the "Neon Nightmare" keeps you from being able to distinguish one from another. (I stopped twice, the second time, double-taking the possibility that I'd circled back to my first stop). We all know what the interstates have done to small town America. 

David (Foster Wallace) told me all about drug re-hab. I can't believe what I'm learning from him about the workings of the addict's mind. The scene he describes (and describes and describes) suggests that the true addict isn't all that interested in being rehabilitated, as if deep in his or her heart he/she knows rehabilitation is not only not possible, but not desired. Being a successful addict is the challenge. David (Foster  Wallace) is helping me understand my brother-in-law, Dan, who is an addict. With both Dan and David, I sense that their addiction is the result of a lifetime of self-medicating their poorly understood bi-polar disease. Dan is still with us. David (Foster Wallace) is not. Unfortunately. 

I was feeling strong late yesterday as I realized that my second way-point and potential stopping place, Altoona (I picked it for it's cool name) was too big, so I kept going. Past Tipton (I thought it would be nice to stay in the second town called "Tipton"), past Tyrone (no lodging according to Siri and my own observation--they do have a working paper mill, however). It was still light as I headed north. "Motels" I said to Siri (I've discovered I need to be firm with her.) "There are a number of Motels not too far from you", she said back. One of them, the Port Matilda Inn and Tavern, was the only one with an unfamiliar name. I pushed the little phone picture. "Tavern" a heard a man answer amid an absolute background cacaphony. I asked if he had a room and how much it would be. He couldn't hear me. "There's one seat at the bar if you get here right away," he said. "No, I need a ROOM," I said. "Oh sure, we have rooms." "How much?" I said. "Forty bucks", he said. "Are you by yourself?" I told him I was. "Then thirty. They're not much. Shower. Bed. No Television." "That's fine" I said. "Internet?" "Yes, internet," he said. "I'll see you soon." 

I followed Siri's instructions to Plank Street in Port Matilda. I found the building and couldn't find a parking place as the large lot was jammed.

I parked out in front and went in. The place was wild. "This is amazing," I said to the waitress, standing near the entrance. "Wing night," she said as if that explained it. "You called about the room," she said, as if I was the only person she didn't know who could have called. "Hold on." She went over and told Mark, a large man with a Steelers cap, who was working the cash register. He brought over his book. "What a business you have here," I said. "Wing night," he said, as if that explained it. I found out that Mark and his father bought the place in 1994, what the internet code was and that I could have food until the grill closed at 10. That I could look at the room before I decided, if I wanted to. I told him that I was sure it was fine. He acted as if I was his new friend. I took my key, got my bag and went up stairs to my room. Although it was the sparest motel/inn/hotel room I'd ever been in, the place had a great feel.

I couldn't believe the contrast between nights: The Comfort Inn at 80 bucks, totally sterile, the woman behind the desk knowing next-to-nothing about the town; and the Port Matilda Inn at 30 bucks so spare yet spirit filled with the personality of a man who grew up within ten miles and knew everyone in the place but me. I went back down to the tavern and ordered meatloaf (of course I ordered meat loaf, telling Mark that my mother always made meatloaf on mondays with the meat leftover from Sunday. "Mine too" he said.)

I had a great conversation with a local couple about politics and Penn State, which I hadn't realized was just up the road. I can't believe the dedication to Penn State people have. My best friend from High School, Doug Bennett, married a Penn Alumn and has caught the bug himself. Every game. Complete depression over Joe Paterno and the child abuse by one of his former coaches; Paterno's life in that community and his pre-mature death. This couple got teary eyed talking about it and insisted that I eat breakfast at the Corner Cafe. Which I'll probably not be able to do. They go to most of the home games and those they don't have tickets to, they go to the tail-gate parties anyway. He sells concrete and she's a laid off bar tender. They have two kids, one currently sick with Mononucleosis ("You know that kid's sick when he doesn't want to ride his new motorcycle or charge up his phone").  Everyone who came in stopped to talk to them. Friendlier people do not exist. We all hugged when it was over. I won't be able to forget Port Matilda. 

If I leave now, I might make Vermont by tonight. This is fun.

  

March 25, P.M.  North Vernon, Indiana.

I drove all day today, needing to make some miles. Missouri, from my perspective along Highway 50, is like Kansas, massive, all-expansive food fields. The difference, again from my perspective, was all the huge houses I saw in Missouri. I would drive past fields for miles. Then there would be a long driveway lined by trees or significant walls, leading to a huge, newly built house. I imagine that farming at this scale can be very lucrative. (I found this on my feed from Alternet, so consider the source.) According to the map, a slight detour would take me along the north side of the Missouri River.

I loved the drive, even though the River itself was out of sight and I only saw it when I crossed the mighty river. (It was so wide that my I-phone GPS screen turned entirely blue as I crossed. The river, however, isn't blue. It is dull gray-brown. Later, I crossed the Mississippi and made this video: 

       
                                    

Thinking more about Tallgrass Prairie. 

I thought more about the efforts to preserve some of the last remaining grasslands in one part of Kansas, while in another the efforts to preserve Dodge City are based on the history of destroying the nature and culture which the grasslands supported--This destruction was planned and implemented by the U.S. Government. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were doing the best they could given the knowledge and information available to them at the time. I wonder about what it might be in the future that we might look back upon and wish we'd known more. What do we have in abundance now that we are taking for granted, that we are willing to give up because we don't yet have the knowledge we need to know its full value? Why can't we learn from the past about protecting that which we don't yet have necessary knowledge to fully appreciate? Or, like every generation, do we really believe we have accumulated all possible and necessary knowledge? 

Highway 50 is so fickle. It divides in places. It lets me down at times,  sacrificing itself to an interstate. Around big cities (Kansas City, St. Louis) it enters and tangles like a red thread thrown into a junk drawer with thick dark cords, only to reappear on the other side. Between big cities, it's great. Between massive fields, Indiana is very wooded. Between woods, however, many of the small towns I've passed through have the disease--the

North Vernon, Indiana

Neon Nightmare disease of a decaying town center but the outskirts growing with the cancer of franchise hell. How did this happen?  I might be wrong, but I think that in Kansas I was better able to predict the 'small-towness' of a town based on the font size used to delineate it on the map--the smaller the lettering the less chance of Neon Hell. Not so in Indiana. I know-- I'm probably generalizing. I don't think I would have done this had I not had a few extra days to make this drive. Spending all day on Interstate Highways and nights in Neon Hell (eating in Pizza Hut, Wendy's; sleeping in Quality Inn, Fairview Inn, Comfort Inn for five days straight) would have made me crazy. Plus, I don't think I'm taking that much more time. I'm driving 65-70 mph. Yes, Highway 50 isn't quite as direct as I-70, but I know that the diversity of what I'm seeing makes the long days speed by. Starting tomorrow, I'll need to make some decisions about going north.

Many "pro-life" signs today, reminding me that we need to take back that term. The 'pro-lifers' are really 'pro-birthers' and don't care much for life, especially life other than human-life. I'm pro all life, any living thing, all life-force, of which we humans are an integral, but small part. One sign said something like, "Smile: Your mother chose life". Are these people suggesting that my mother considered aborting her unborn baby?  I wonder what David (Foster Wallace) would write about this.

Since leaving Colorado, I've seen one cyclist (east of Jefferson City, Missouri, which by the way, is considered the center of America) and one jogger in downtown Bedford, Indiana. 

March 25. Tipton, Missouri.

A short day, yesterday, but I think I'm still on schedule to meet Terry on the 28^th at the airport in Manchester, VT—short mileage-wise, as I only made 250 miles and not the 400+ on Days 1 and 2.

I spent a few incredible hours at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills of Kansas. After an hour in the visitor center (I had no idea there were so many different grasshoppers—five including the Birdwing and the Plains Lubber) I decided to take a walk along the Scenic Trail, where I was told I might see Bison. This trail--more of a road--had recently been covered by tan-colored road based which contrasted with the orange 'tall grasses' on my left and the dark, recently burned right side.

This is the season for using controlled burns to duplicate as closely as possible the natural process. I was all alone and my body was ecstatic to be moving. My map showed miles and miles of trails through the 11,000 acres 'preserved' in this partnership the National Park Service has with the Nature Conservancy. I'd learned that only 4% of the nearly 200 million acres of original grasslands still exist.

I couldn't help connecting what I'd seen the day before in Dodge City. There, the entire town seemed dedicated to the memory of the time in our history when efforts by our government to settle America's nether regions in order to take advantage of the natural resources found there. Dodge City's fame is based on the debauchery of its white, largely male, population who were there to kill the Indians and the bison, clearing the way for America to fulfill its destiny. The destruction of these grasslands was one price of this progress. 

The road/trail curved right (Without the mountain and cliff landmarks I'm used to, I never know what actual direction I'm facing) past a small pond made by the original owners of the ranch this preserve once was. A large sand-piper, one of a dozen species, called out a warning. I walked up the hill where the road turned left across the rim of a slope that dropped into a wash to the right. From there, this preserve seemed to go on forever. Small lark-like birds squeaked in the grass, never flying high enough for a good look. All alone, the low grey sky and anemic light, I felt like the last person on earth and I liked it. Fresh signs of bison were everywhere. The road turned right and I could see in the distance where it crossed up through a small pass. The small hill on my left seemed to be a high point and I was thinking about walking up it when I noticed the distant black dots and knew I'd found the bison. I could see in my binoculars at least a dozen. Which became two dozen once I realized that what I'd assumed were rocks on a hillside were soft brown boulders--more bison. I walked on, slowly, hoping not to frighten them. The closest (a young male?) looked up and stared at me. I recalled only one warning sign about getting too close to the bison, in contrast to Yellowstone, where this is a constant and widespread issue, most likely due to the numbers of people who visit there. The young male turned and moved toward the others, as if wanting them to know I was approaching. He stopped and looked again.

I moved to the other side of the road and walked slowly, methodically, thoughtlessley, remembering the meditation walks I'd been on with Jack Turner. He believes that we give off an energy with our thoughts which wild animals sense and are frightened by. Reducing our thoughts quiets that energy, allowing us to approach more closely. I think it worked. For some reason I was not afraid of these grassland bison. I'm not sure why. I stopped and sat down on the ground and waited. I noticed that the air near those bison seemed thicker and heavier, as if they played a role with gravity (why wouldn't they?). Any sounds were muffled. I sat there watching the bison until my butt was wet and cold. I figured I could walk down through the wash back to the trail head, and started off across the recently burned plain. White rocks and small green plant shoots dotted the dark, lush soil. Dropping into the wash I noticed the bison trails woven back and forth and immediately thought of September, two years ago in Gates of the Arctic National Park. I still can't believe that standing in the middle of a grassland in Kansas could in any way remind me of the Arctic, but it did. The trails--bison/caribou; the grasses between boulders; the low metal sky; the small stream. Context. The beauty and brilliance of National Parks is context and how if we let them they can create small worlds within worlds where we are part of life is as it once was, how it should be. Yesterday, for that moment in that wash that small world was the only world and it was as big and full of wonder as the Alaskan Arctic.

March 24.

Hold it. We are still in Kansas, Dorthy, and it’s not like I thought. The sky is grey—much thicker than yesterday when sunbeams penetrated down to earth periodically and color from the setting sun brought spectacular definition to individual clouds. This weather is perfect for me because if I saw  bright sun on these massive green fields in or a bright colbalt sky that arcs 180 degrees from one nearly flat horizon to the other might change how I’m supposed to feel about Kansas. I might realize that I like it here. 

For the first few hundred miles I swear everything was cultivated. Anything once wild had been killed or covered. I accused those few conifer trees I saw of being planted (I’m sure if I’d stopped to look I would find them growing in straight lines). Besides the Arkansas River, most of the water was in human constructed canals. Everything seems to be in straight lines in Kansas. Pigeons were the only birds I saw, which, although I couldn’t see their silver leg bands were probably renegades from someone’s coop. I spent an hour looking for the Finney Bison Range outside of Garden City because I needed to see something natural. There, I stood up on a platform and saw unlimited, what I would call prairie—I’ll know better today once I experience The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.  No bison.

Further east the massive fields—those I’ve seen from planes—take on edges they share with taller, more diverse, more interesting vegetation. Hawks (buteos?), and smaller brown, finch-like or sparrow-like, or even fly-catcher-like birds pass in front of me in pairs or threes. One bird may have been a prairie falcon but I doubt it.

Still, life in Kansas seems focused on what the landscape can offer people. This was the theme I left Dodge City with. I went there almost unconsciously as if drawn by some psychic magnet. Looking back, I think this is some remnant from Marshal Matt Dillon and Kitty on the series Gunsmoke, which I discovered ran throughout my complete youth, from 1955 (I was three) to 1975, the year Terry and I got married and I “put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

I stood inside Dodge City’s Long Branch Saloon and wandered Boot Hill Cemetary (what’s left of it.) I’m glad I went as it solidified my thinking on Manifest Destiny. America’s focus in the mid-nineteenth Century was to get settlers out west. This meant dealing with Indians who sensing the potential devastating effect this would have on their lives and their culture, wanted to kill white people. The American government discovered that their frontier fighters were no match for the Indians, chose to kill all the bison, on whose lives the Indians depended. The government recruited thousands of hunters who killed tens of millions bison. Indians who didn’t starve to death were forced onto reservations. The railroad soon followed. Then, conveniently, domestic cattle who wouldn’t need to compete with wild bison for forage. Much of this converged upon Dodge City. The rest is history. Actually, it’s all history. 

 

 

 I wondered: if everything in Kansas is altered for use by modern humans, then what would people living here have to compare to? Do they sense a wild world beyond their own, a life-force which includes but does not favor them over any other life? Do they look out on those broad fields filling the full view, with no mountains or oceans to contain them, and unconsciously feel that feeding and fueling American people is all that matters? Highway 50 through Kansas is a tour of America's storeroom: oil and gas (fields, equipment) cattle (range, feedlots, auctions), crops and the gear to produce them.

Fortunately, this applies to renewables as well. On the outskirts of Garden city, I passed a football field-sized yard filled with wind turbine blades. Then, a few miles beyond Dodge City, Highway 50 passes through miles and miles of the turning turbines, themselves. I had the sense that the wind there was constant and those turbines never stopped. 

I'm writing this morning from my room at the Country Inn Motel in Marion, Kansas. It's a bit north of Highway 50 but it's all I could find, as the Refinery in nearby McPherson is being upgraded and 1500 temporary employees have filled every available room in a 50 mile radius. Or so this inn's proprietor tells me. He's a very gentle friendly man, born to hospitality, although he'll soon retire from the oil and gas industry. After owning the Country Inn for 18 years, he and his wife (thegrand-daughter works with them) are ready to sell. As a joke, I send Terry a picture and a message about moving to Marion to run this place and disappear for a year or two.(see my instagram for this and other photos: brookusi. )

This morning walking for coffee, I saw a number of small rhinos decorated as if for a fund raiser. Don't ask. I didn't. Here are three of them: 

Now, it’s raining lightly. The weather woman I heard late yesterday said it might rain today, that it would be colder (she’s right about that, too) and to expect some hail, “but nothing larger than golf-ball-sized” she said. I hope she’s wrong, there.

March 23. Book Cliffs/Colorado/David Foster Wallace

I left Castle Valley at the crack of 10, heading east. Highway 50 is pretty much I-70 now until the Westwater Exit, just west of the Colorado Border. I didn’t realize it last November when Terry and Louis and I took a drive to the proposed Tar Sand site in the Book Cliffs that the Seep Ridge Road through the Book Cliffs starts with a turn off of Highway 50. We wanted to see what the 'first' project to extract oil from Tar Sands looked like, what a tribe of young people had sacrificed their freedom to protest. 

The Seep Ridge Road is spectacular as it traverses some of the wildest landscape I've seen. Up through a twisting canyon, the conifers getting larger the farther we went. On top, the road twisted along a ridge top as we dodged huge piles of horse shit the wild horse studs use to mark their territories. Herds of elk played in the tall sage like barrel racers. Eagles soared. There had to have been mountain lions nearby. First we saw the silver gleam of the sun bouncing off of the new fence surrounding the project. Then, miraculous in its abruptness, the dirt road stopped and the blackest, newest three lane highway I've ever seen started. The map shows it all the way to Vernal. Two years ago, I was eating breakfast with a well known conservationist from Denver. "You're spending a lot of time in Utah these days", I said. "Don't you know," she said, "everything bad starts in Utah." I thought about that and then I thought about the possibility that everything bad that starts in Utah, starts on Utah Trust Lands. (SITLA--School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration. They get away with murder beneath the banner of "it's for the school children".). Yes, the company (the same Canadian company reeking havoc in Alberta) came to SITLA to begin its project because their paper work is less complicated (their environmental standards are more lax) than the BLM. This is just one example. It could be that those young protesters were onto something: the biggest environmental difference one could make would be to nip the disastrous SITLA projects in the bud. 

Book Cliffs looking east near the Colorado Border

Highway 50 is pocked with holes and the desert is biting away at its edges and I wondered how long before it would completely disappear. At one point I swear there was no pavement left, only dirt and some cheap road base someone had spread around. Then, miraculously, the road resurrected. Right at the Colorado border. Recently paved. New yellow lines down the center, white lines along the sides. This seemed to correspond with the ranches I saw, and the cows and cattle auction site, and the machinery (working as opposed to rusting). 

Then into Fruita. 

The town has obviously embraced mountain biking as a key to their economic development. I remember back a few years when Moab thought they were losing biking customers to Fruita. This makes me wonder about Fruita town meetings. Are they like one recently held in Moab wherein those who were there to support conservation based on the fact that outdoor recreation is Moab's new economy, were lambasted by old-line Moabites who were sick of newbies coming in and changing their lives. So many of our problems, I believe, are based on the battle between those who see change and adaptation as natural and necessary and those who with the last strength they have are hanging onto a past that is no longer relevant. I imagine there are those two sides in Fruita, as well. At least they have a mountain biker on the town grain elevator to show some balance.

I made a long stop in Grand Junction to find the gizmo that would allow me to listen to what's on my new I-phone through my car's speakers. Three stops were required to finally get it right. I realized that much of the shopping we do when we go to Grand Junction is along Highway 50. (Hell, the Mesa Mall is on Highway 50!). Now I can listen to all 65 hours of Infinite Jest without the pain of head phones. 

Weird that I wrote about Miller's idea of "autobiographical novel" because that is exactly (I believe) what Wallace wrote. Otherwise, how could he make addiction and suicide and that early scene where Hal, the protagonist, is being scrutinized by the high school admissions people? I'm glad I read Every Love Story is a Ghost Story --his biography, first. There's an amazing scene in Jest (I heard it as I left Pueblo, the sky darkened by clouds beneath which an peach-colored sun set formed on the horizon) in which a young woman is talking with a psychiatrist after she has attempted suicide. "Why?" he asked, "do you want to hurt yourself?" "I don't want to hurt myself," she says. "I want to kill myself." She continues to describe the pain she feels..."you've had a stomach ache, haven't you, where you just want to vomit up everything to get some relief? (I'm paraphrasing here) "Well, it's as if every one of my cells has that kind of ache which they all need to vomit out the pain but they can't."  I don't believe someone who had not experienced that could have written it. 

I made a quick detour to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Visitor's Center. I can't believe that there's a National Park this close to home, that I've never been to. I stopped at one spectacular overlook and was amazed by what I saw. 

I’ll definitely be back here.

I passed through many small Colorado towns--Salida, Royal Gorge, Canon City. They're all transitioning to recreation. If I saw one more sign advertising "Zip Lines" I would have gone nuts. Zip lines and river trips ('walk-ins welcome' like barber shops.) All evidence I believe of two things: more tourists feeling the (unconscious?) need to experience the wild world; and entreprenuers who don't really understand the wild world creating products from it. (I'm aware of my bias showing here. )

Canon City, I read, is the home to ten prisons, including one for the worst of the worst. Not sorry I missed that. 

Enough. I'll leave now, headed for Kansas today. I think I'll stop in Dodge City. Isn't Boot Hill there?

 

March 22^nd,

Went to sleep after starting Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s banned book. The book has been on our shelf for years, but I never thought much of Henry Miller until we visited his Library in Big Sur a few years ago. Then, during my obsession with Richard Jefferies, I discovered that he also inspired Miller. Karl Shapiro's introduction to my edition (1961) is terrific. He talks about Miller and the idea of an ‘auto-biographical novel’, which today we might call creative non-fiction. I’m interested in the difference. He says about Miller, "that it is not art that he cares about; it is man, man's treatment of man in America and man's treatment of Nature. What we get from Miller is not a sense of superiority buy fury, even the futry of the prophet of doom." I wonder what Miller would be saying today.

Which makes me eager to finish the introduction I'm working on, for Back of Beyond. 

There’s something to the incessant details I’m finding in the first chapter which remind me of Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian novelist who’s writing that 6 volume memoir I’ve only read about (a NYT piece on him which goes on and on about his dilemma of not having a valid driver’s license yet needing to rent a car for a writing assignment.) Part of me wonders why, even though writers like Zadie Smith think this guy is the real thing, I should care about this level of life’s minutiae while another part wonders if I might be missing something. I might have to try some of it.

I’ll load the last boxes, fill up my coffee cup and head to Colorado. My plan is to drive to the southeast corner (Los Animas?) stopping along the way at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. I've never seen it even though it's so close. That'll be after Grand Junction for an adapter to hook my I-phone into my car’s speakers to listen to the audio book of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (which after 8 attempts to read the actual book, it may have the captive audience it requires.)

Terry is now on a plane east out of Jackson after a stressful cab ride with a man from Nigeria who was half-an-hour late after not being able to find her house. My, that town has changed.  

The air is cool this morning as I'm walking out the door. It feels thick and soft, different now than in June when I'm back to find it throbbing and buzzing with heat. 

Leaving Castle Valley

 . 

Saturday, sunup. 

T minus 24 hours and a long list of tasks. 

I woke up dreaming about our congressman Chaffetz who is in a dark room talking through an opaque curtain to an unknown person, whose face can’t be seen, only his silhouette . 

 The unseen man represents the Koch Brothers, who symbolize corporate America’s strangle hold on our  political system.

Dark Voice: You said it was urgent. We’re not supposed to meet like this. (the scene in The Blacklist I watched on Hulu last night comes to mind.)  You know how important it is that we’re never seen together. “Mission Critical” you said. I hope so.

Chaffetz: I’m so sorry. I know you’re busy. But I’m really struggling.

Dark Voice: How could you be struggling? All you need to worry about is getting re-elected and I’ll see to that. You know the drill.

Chaffetz. I know. I know and I appreciate how much easier it is to be a career politician, thanks to you. But….

Dark Voice: No buts. Get to the point.

Chaffetz: I’m struggling because some days I can’t believe what I hear myself saying…I don’t believe what I hear coming out of my mouth.

Dark Voice: You don’t get paid to believe. That was the deal. We’ll believe for you.

Chaffetz: I mean this stuff about Hillary’s emails…can I drop that? And Bengazi, how long do I need to beat that dead horse? And state control of Federal Lands and voting against any minimum wage increases, and sacking medicare….I wasn’t raised this way…

Dark Voice: Are you finished? 

Chaffetz: And climate change...what if.....?

Dark Voice: Are you questioning me? I didn't think so. Are you finished now?

Chaffetz: (bent over, head in hands) I guess. Thanks for listening.

Dark Voice: Mike Lee and Scott Brown—they’re smart. They don’t have a problem. You need to take a hard look in the mirror. If you’re not up to this, we’ll find someone who is.

Chaffetz: Yes sir. I know sir. I'm sorry. I’ll try harder sir.

I think it was Chaffetz in my dream because of all the Utah Politicians I’ve met in Washington, he seemed like the one who might at some point think for himself. He seemed attentive when we talked to him about wilderness, and open to the possibility of a creative approach to bridging the gaps. But that was a while ago. I can't imagine that any of these people don't, at some point question what they have to do or say to stay loyal to their party and their source of funding. 

My task list includes finishing a story I'm writing that will become the introduction to a collector's book commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Back of Beyond Books, Moab's great bookstore. What I love about writing is that yes, to begin requires a compelling idea or reason or assignment. I struggle and fuss and get up and down (I know that a desk chair with a seat belt would help me), but once I've managed to tap into that creative space, I find the real reason. In this case, I'm learning that I've not been bold enough; that there is much more I need to say regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me. 

Turn down the water heater

Hook up the swamp cooler

Water the plants

Boil some road eggs

Shower

Leave Mercedes a note

Chop wood

Carry water