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.

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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.