Traveling Alone In America

Traveling Alone In America

Over many years, as both a child and adult, I have spent a lot of time travelling in different parts of America. Washington, the state not the political entity, Oregon, California, Hawaii, and Nevada. Once I placed an adolescent foot in Arizona as I straddled the border, and a time zone, on the Boulder Dam. It’s always been fun, entertaining, and eye opening. In fact I met one of my first girlfriends on a two week bus tour of California and Nevada. All of those places, and some of the people, from the cities to the mountains to the country fields to the desert, inspired me to write in my personal journal about how each of them affected me.

However, this time the journey was very different. In the twenty four days I was on the road, I passed from the Pacific Northwest coast that is my home in Canada, to the very tip of the southeast point of the Continental United States. That’s a long distance in miles/kilometers, but a very different journey in terms of landscapes, peoples, and cultures. Leaving the lush rainforest of my home, to pass through the mountains and ranch lands of Wyoming and Montana, to the sparseness of the central plains, and down through America’s breadbasket, to the welcoming arms of Kansas City, a surprisingly wonderful Memphis, steamy New Orleans, and the tropical Florida Keys.

Nearly everywhere I stopped the vastness of the land, and the kindness of her people, couldn’t help but strike me as being more than I had hoped, and more than I had expected. Keep this in mind, most people’s sightings of America and her people are on Television shows, through books, and news media, as was mostly mine.

What I found was not the media induced landscape I had been raised to see. America is not as “sick” as their many ads for pharmaceuticals would have you believe. In fact most of the people I had the great honour to deal with looked very healthy, and for the most part happy. At the very least, America is not a nation under siege. The negative emotional hyperbole of corporate media notwithstanding, America seems to do quite well in its day to day life.

The Wyoming and Montana “Territories” were huge, empty landscapes that spoke of cruel winters, and tough lives. The gates that could be lowered across the highway during winter storms were a sobering reminder that people can easily get lost and not be found until spring, even on a four lane Interstate highway. The South Dakota and Iowa landscapes of farms and the long distances between settlements spoke volumes to me about hardiness, and lives lived with a vast difference to my suburban upbringing. My playmates lived next door, or down a paved street. Here the nearest neighbours are miles away down dirt roads in summer, and heaven knows what in winter. This is an isolating land for her people, and I came to have what can only be described as an outsider’s glimpse of why this part of the country has so many individualists. They can’t rely on “others” as we in the cities might, for “others” are too far away. In this part of the big country something as simple as an ambulance or fire truck can be many miles away.

In that realization comes a perspective about the difference of perspectives. On the gun issue alone one can see a need for protection in a land that very much would like to kill you. It’s nothing personal as it would be with people, it’s more the universe couldn’t really care if you are on the land or not. The land was here before, and will be long after. The food chain of the native creatures themselves insist on surviving, even if they threaten man’s endeavours to conquer the land, the coyotes, and bears, and snakes, will have their toll. The urban/rural divide raises its head. I myself come down on both sides of the issue, but I think if the zealots who scream their views at each other were to come and sit in each other’s chairs for a few days; the discussion might progress in a very different and civil manner.

The unexpected wonders I found in Kansas City. A staggeringly huge war memorial, the renovated beauty of Union Station, a museum dedicated to a musical form I have long loved, and a baseball museum that brought home the unexpected emotion of just what the staggering cost of institutionalized racism really means, and it sobered me.

Memphis brought me face to face with a musician I had loved since childhood. Not in the extreme “fan” way, but more as a symbol of a boyhood longing of wanting to be able to sing the way he sang. To spend a few moments thinking of a friend, now lost to us, who loved the music with all his great big heart. To have a massive plate of ribs that defies my ability to describe, and to have a burger and a beer in the blues club of a master. To get a hand car wash in a neighbourhood where I felt out of place by my colour, but was by no means uncomfortable. The people were kind and friendly, and in many ways knowing. With sadness I missed a museum that I very much wanted to visit. I wanted more context of the civil rights struggle, but they’re closed on Tuesday.

New Orleans was more a delight than a disappointment. The seedy and tacky frat party atmosphere on Bourbon Street, gave way to the wonderful galleries of Royal Street. A morning walk through the French Quarter showed me more than I could have seen had I gone in the evening when the streets would have been crowded with revellers. The food of the Quarter was sublime, and the wonderful beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde will always define such things for me. I have to go back for more. Their coffee might be available by mail order, but not the experience of the icing sugar and the humidity.

Having the opportunity to view the Great Plains, the Continental Divide, the Ozarks, the Gulf of Mexico, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Little Big Horn, the aviation museums, Graceland, and even Wall Drug, left me with a feeling that iconic America still lives.

This was a road trip taken alone. The reasons are many and personal, and they will mostly stay that way. When I got home I felt lighter. Some of the many “grets” and regrets of my life had been silently dealt with while I quietly steered the car. 

For those of you who might wonder about the difference between a “gret” and a regret, it is this. A “gret” is a negative thought or emotion that you have forgotten, or intentionally didn’t want to deal with. That “something” whether it’s an unreturned phone call, a bill payment, a badly dealt with relationship breakup, or having said something you didn’t mean but that came out of your mouth anyway, or conversely saying the wrong thing to cover a very real thing. A “regret” is when you have that same thought or feeling over and over. Your own quiet guilt trip. Whichever they might be, or what they become, they all hang like little one ounce weights on your soul and you carry them with you, always, until you get some subconscious time and distance to let them deal with you. We all carry our own share of grets and regrets. They are a part of what helps to make us human. If you don’t have them you are either lying to yourself, or need professional help.

When I returned from this trip I didn’t have the chance to properly process all I had learned, seen, experienced, and felt. Within a couple of days I rushed back to work in what would turn out to be the most horrendous year of my many years of employment. A management change can have the most unforeseen results when you move from a collaborative and mostly inclusive style, to an arrogant dictatorship. It would culminate in my eventual retirement. A move that was made more to save my life, to seek long term treatment for high blood pressure (190/90) on the day I left work) brought on by dealing with vicious and small minded arrogance more than anything else.

That is why I am so long in finishing up the story of the cross country journey. I used to laugh off the idea of “being in the wrong head space”, but I get it now.

My personal journeys can now continue, but at a different pace, and in different ways. I can now devote more time to the importance of having a life itself, rather than the life of racing towards imposed deadlines that, in retrospect, really meant less than nothing. 

So this life changing road journey is done, but there will be more. I can’t help myself. My life has always been a big adventure. Even going to the grocery store can be an adventure, if you look at it as more than a chore.

Enjoy the day, and stay tuned, the best is yet to be written!