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!
