Walk Away

A few years ago, when I delved into the morass of narcissism and even more unsavory isms that comprise facebook, I half-jokingly started a group called the Virginia Diaspora, for people like me who had been born in the Old Dominion, but had subsequently fled in search of asylum, or peace, or just a change of pace and place. Few people joined, but I did re-connect with a few dozen people I'd known from the neighborhood and school. Many still lived within a half-hour SUV ride of where we'd grown up, some had migrated elsewhere in the Commonwealth or the Mid-Atlantic, and a few had flung themselves farther.

While it was interesting (sometimes) to learn what had become of people, this virtual homecoming reminded me of why I'd left, and set me to wondering how it could have gotten worse than Reagan Era Virginia, which was what had sent me running in the first place. On display: a rainbow of bigotries, a robust sense that rich white heterosexuals were sorely victimized, worship of mammon and guns (and among some, an old white man known as "God"), and intolerance. By no means all of them acted this way, but it was enough to shake my faith in progress, and eventually to turn my back on the virtual place the same way I had on the red clay of my birth-land.

Like I say, not all of the fb "friends" (never has a word been more drained of its soul than when it became synonymous with a single reflexive click) were right-wing ogres. Some had led interesting lives, had opened themselves to more than we'd been raised to accept. A small few became people I kept up with even after the fb environs grew too creepy for me to inhabit. One, I even visited a year ago, when I made my first foray back to Virginia in half a decade.


Which is when I realized (duh) that the virtual world ain't real. The avid gardener hadn't raised more than weeds in years, and was ditching country life for sprawlburbs. Having recently inherited millions, the inheritance tax had become injustice, and people were now threatening to take advantage, including me, when I let her pay for a breakfast biscuit (or, 0.00001% of said inheritance). Roughly an hour from the malaised middle class suburb where we grew up, she was in pretty much the same place, only with more liberal-ish shopping preferences, unable to see the difference between Whole Food Inc. and sustainable foodways.

Oh well.

It would have been easier to take had I not been in shock at what had happened to my old haunts during years of absence. All the farmland and forests were gone, paved over for shopping places that will fade and fall into ruin, and for road after road after road. People doing exactly as the President said in a rare moment of candor, clinging to their god and their guns. Real profits (for a few) and false prophets (for the many) twisting the message of their nominal saviour to justify greed and hatred. Again, not everybody was this way, but enough to make a lefty evolutionist like me damned nervous.

Recently, the news has been no better. A burning trainload of oil falls into the river I once canoed and from which my relatives still get their drinking water, and still the shrill calls for end to government regulation. On Easter morning, people awoke to find eggs in their yards proclaiming racist slogans, and the response was, "Kids are too young to see this," as if it would be comprehensible in a few years. My former US Congressman, Eric Cantor, not ideologically pure enough, is being challenged from the right wing, as people laugh off the concept that there could ever be a Democrat in his position.

I could rant, and I guess I just have (and probably will again), but it would not change anything. Ever since its founding as a commercial colony to benefit the few, Virginia has been driven by wealth and "conservatism." Hell, even the leaders of the revolution against the king started out and ended up being filthy rich, retaining ownership of human beings, and controlling politics in what turned out to be a very English patrician way. Generations later, having jettisoned even the pretense of Enlightenment thinking, Virginians practiced a religion that justified slavery, and backed it up with a war that was, for even the whitest of the common folk, disastrous. From Jim Crow to Massive Resistance to demonized Welfare Queens to the Tea Party, the wealthy string-pullers have mobilized the faithful pawns to protect the interests of the few at the cost of the many.

Maybe it's chickenshit of me to do so, but I choose to be in the Virginia Diaspora rather than stick around and pay taxes to a state so bent on backwardness. I walked away, again.

Feeding the Hand that Bites You

"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

The last book I read was about the Nez Perce war, and right now I'm working on one about the Puget Sound wars, treaties, and trial of Leschi a generation earlier. It ain't pretty, and ties into why I'd rather fill out "Other" than "White" or "Caucasian" on forms that ask for ethinicity. I have to assume that a large percentage of "Others" are similarly aware of "white" misdoings (I'll leave the "Caucasian" misdoings to that Caucasus favorite son, Joe Stalin).

Another Joseph, the Younger Joseph of the Nimipu (Nez Perce) was betrayed and hunted like a disagrreable neighbor's rabid dog a generation after Leschi of the Squally Absch (Nisqually) was killed like,...the same. The reason for this was not that either of these men, their forebears, or their kin, had done wrong by American settlers. To the contrary, Nimipu and others saved Lewis and Clark from starvation, provided guides, and even horse-sitting services, without which the Corps of Discovery would not have reached the Pacific, much less returned home. Leschi and others accomodated Hudsons Bay men and even attempted to deal with the Bostons (Americans) and their psychopath Governor of Washington Territory. 

As in Jamestown and a thousand points of dark in between, tribes in the Columbia Plateau and Puget Trough first dealt with west-hungry explorers and settlers by feeding them. Thanks for the Giving.

But food for the small settlements only led to hunger for everything outside the pale. Lewis and Clark handed out medals, but later American settlers grabbed and acted offended when the natives wanted to stay free on the land they'd tended for millennia. Even in the middle of the Pacific Moana, sons of missionaries who had depended on the kindness of kanakas turned around and plantationized islands, pauperizing most of the inhabitants.

Fresh out of native people to rob, the American elite eventually turned to stealing Africans and distilling wealth from their sweat (yeah, the Yankees did it too, with shiploads of human cargo headed to the plantations). Once they ran out of brown peoples, the uber-white people turned their attention to their unter-brethren, continuing to concentrate wealth among the few while consigning the masses of crackers to poverty. The process continues unabated (accelerated, even) until today.

But none of this would have happened had not Wahunsenakawh (Powhatan) fed the hand that would eventually bite him and eventually everyone else in Indian Country. As my people say, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Obliterative Persistence

Yon shot shows the floodzone of Scottsville, Virginia, on the River James. Once, it was called by King James' subjects the River of Powhatan, the name they used for the local leader Wahunsenacawh (father of the one they called Pocahontas), but this is upstream of his territory, where Monacan people no doubt had their own name. 

The photo is dominated by the most recent development along the north bank of the river, the massive dike clad in grass; it protects a town where people travel by pick-up and, increasingly, crossover SUVs and hybrids, none of which appreciate being flooded. Just to the right is the penultimate development, black rails on a bed of gravel where grass nor weeds nor even the most beautiful shrubbery are tolerated. Under that, and perhaps in the trees to the right, lies the canal that was obsolesced by the railroad; old timey as it may seem, the canal was no less a scheme to make money off of development and the transit of goods to markets. The red brick building handled the trade, but now it's cut off by dike and a pair of rails.

Further right, the brownwater of the James peeks between tree trunks. Once, people and their stuff moved on the river itself. Canoes, then batteaux. Way before that, there was a low spot in the terrain that water sought in it's quest to become saline. Now, cities pump out of the flow so the masses may drink, and a warming globe sucks it dryer and dryer every summer. 

Even when I canoed this part of the river in the early 1980's and had to hop out and tow it (downstream, no less) through massive algae blooms in tepid water, the James seemed like a hard place to move even a lightly loaded boat. The canal meant to bypass seasonal shallows and permanent outcrops was first damaged by federal troops before succumbing to rail-borne manifest destiny. Railroads still run, but mostly for the most massive of commodities such as Appalachian coal headed seaward, while diesel trucks carry the bulk of consumer goods. The town of Scottsville feels safe behind it's dike, but this too is momentary, as it was not planned for the climate changes facing the good townspeople and everyone else. 

The town exists because there a road crosses a river. One transportation system lays itself over the last. The stay the same even as they change. What we are used to will change, and what we build will fall, but the river still flows to the sea.

River James

I started this blog a couple of years ago starting upstream against the James, and there is always part of me that will live there, or at least in the Tuckahoe swamp feeding its flow. The headwaters, frigid eddies and snow-rafts heading downstream under dim-winter grey, were the last I’ve seen of that river where I once canoed, swam, waded, and kept a wary eye out for snakes.

Lately, though, as I followed a blog (http://300songs.com/2010/09/28/55-james-river-cracker-and-camper-van-beethoven-richmond-virginia/) by the songwriter and adoptive Richmonder David Lowery, the river has flooded back into my consciousness. That blog started as a way to explain his 300 songs, give them some context spin and stories, but it has spawned some interesting essays on cultural geography, on the natural and man-made material underpinnings of music and lifeways. “James River” is one of those songs.

James as in Jamestown, as in centuries of arterial flow (rum and sickle cells upstream, moonshine and tobacco downstream), as in a city’s flusher, as in a swath of wild through so-called civilization. Lowery recognizes in its neglected banks and muddy water the “elegant decay” of a defeated Southern capital. For all the talk of rednecks and junkies and that, you can tell he loves the place. Sometimes, at least.

Richmond is where it is because of the Falls; it lies on the toe of the Piedmont foot, or if you want to look at it another way, the promontory above Tidewater’s swampy expanse. Just like Alexandria (DC being a modern invention by Virginia standards) and Fredericksburg. All these Falls cities had their ports, and it’s tempting to thing that’s the end of it, cities just automatically spring up at the point where merchant ships had to stop and unload.

That probably explains why the settlement lasted, but not why it appeared. The English set up near the falls because that’s where Wahunsenacawh held court. The Spaniards who didn’t stay too long called him Carlos, I think, and the new batch of Europeans took to calling him Powhatan. His homeland was to the north on a smaller river, but once he’d fought, married, and politicked his way to the apex of a large confederation, he headed to the James. What he called it, I have no idea, but the first English just called it Powhatan’s River before they came up with the original idea of naming it for their bible-revising king.

Wahunsenacawh wasn’t there because he had deep draft merchant ships, although the logic of stopping at the falls holds true for canoes. Maybe he didn’t want to be too far from the Chickahominy just downstream, a tribe who stood out in the region for their democratic system of government and widely feared warriors—double threat to a guy like W. Probably he wanted to control the flow of trade between coast and interior. Definitely he did not want to live way downriver at some hellhole like Jamestown Island, with its bad water and malarial swamps.

Oh, and the precondition to all that commerce and politics: a river spawning huge runs of fish. I won’t quote the 16^thcentury shamster bit about walking across the river on their backs. That’s frickin’ ridiculous, and it saddens me to see so-called historians repeat false claims intended to trick people into putting money or themselves into the Virginia venture. But there were unimaginably more fish than now, and of course a bunch of them would run into the falls, creating a major harvest locus.

Anadromous fish excel in excess capacity, and so large annual harvests are possible without killing them off. The humans coming to get the fish would have swelled the population during certain months, and would have had some impact on water quality, especially if a downpour came after they’d done a big burn eroded gullies and caused a pulse of ash and mud. So was the river in its pristine pre-human state when English colonists set foot on the river their progeny would one day dump kepone into? No, but it was likely in an evolutionary, ecological balance.

The river in those days could be a boundary, but nowhere near as much as when Europeans came along. The great chief’s influence didn’t go north of the Potomac, and of course there have always been beefs between left and right bankers on any river, but all it takes is a look at the names of Tribes to know that they saw rivers as centers more than as edges: Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Pamunkey,…

Now, rivers divide counties, states, nations. The James separates Henrico (no Spanish pronunciation in this honorific for Henry, you either say hen-RYE-co, or if you are old and local enough, Hen-RUKkah) and Chesterfield. The line it wrought on maps and in minds of Euro-Americans was frought with various worries and prejudices. Although the City of Richmond annexed part of the south long ago, the power and money generally stick to the north. Long before there were railroads and wrong sides of tracks, ‘South Side’ was a slur.

Maybe this stemmed from racism, the south bank of the James near Richmond being one of the few places where free blacks could live. Or maybe it’s geography, south of the river being the ever-broader coastal plain, lots of creeks and swamps (culminating in the great Dismal Swamp) but not enough rivers to connect with the wide world. In time, Southside sprouted manufacturing and chemical plants, refineries, and neighborhoods for the workers. The owners of these concerns settled in a way that reflected US history: labor and resources extracted from the south fed opulence in the north, which kept expanding westward. Just as Southside brings forth visions of smoke and white trash, a Richmonder understands that West End means wealth (and pretensnobbery).

I grew up in that westward expansion. I knew that as a recently fatherless girl, during the Depression, my grandmother had helped run a boarding house in Richmond, but the truth is that neither of my parents grew up there; they arrived in the late-1960s and decided that the West End had better schools, so I ended up growing up in suburbia. I remember no other place before.

Yet, still in reach of the river. We’d hear the trains on the James, played there from time to time. My dad’s work was not far from one of the bridges. On rare but indelible days, winds from the southeast would waft the warm sweet spice of curing tobacco from Shockoe Slip right up to my nose.

A nose that knew the stink of swamp and the danks of copses. Across the street from our house, there was another row if identical houses, and then Tuckahoe, the James trib separating Henrico from Goochland Counties. The placename refers to an aquatic plant whose tubers formed a crucial foundation in whatever Food Pyramid was promulgated by Wahusenacawh’s Department of Health. One of those taro-like plants that occurs in every tributary of the James, in sloughs and swamps everywhere through that country. And before a succession of tobacco, corn, coal mining, and real estate development took over, I imagine some patches were cultivated, others were half-wild reserves, and a few went feral. Our swamplands were once breadbaskets.

But all those things did happen, and the woods I walked were thick with greenbriar and honeysuckle vines, mostly under thick hardwood canopy. Step in the wrong place, and the mud would suck off your shoe, poison ivy would baste you with time-delayed blistery misery, cottonmouth or copperhead would strike, or worse. A few times it froze hard enough to venture off the trails and onto the ice, but always with the fear of falling through. When it finally did happen, someone got a boot-full of water and muck, but nothing worse, and we grew out of some fear.

One time me and my friend were walking through these woods when we came upon something worse: 4 boys coming the other way. At their head was a guy who was fairly big and thought of himself as a strong guy, being just bright enough to know he’d never be the smart guy. We’d met at a log crossing The Ditch, a mucky gash dumping the neighborhood storm drains into Tuckahoe swamp. I stepped on and so did he, and in the middle he grabbed my walking stick and tried to twist it from my grip or me from the log. Neither succeeded, and I don’t even remember who got to cross first. Just the rush of adrenalin, a stalemate, and then cracking up when he solemnly uttered, “You’re strong. I admire that.” Like in some old melodrama about days of chivalry or some such crap delivered in a fake English accent.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, “You’re a fatass.”

Turns out the guy’s family were Southsiders.

And so this entry ends with no summary, no pith. Just me taking a break.

Sturgeon Story

Once, long ago, a fish entered the Chesapeake. A sturgeon, sticking to the bottom most of the time as was the way of his people. Nose swiveled to the mud, he swam from cape to cape and up every bight and river, past eelgrass and
oyster-bed, into every creek and gut. For sturgeons are long-lived, curious, and methodical. And they know the best grounds underwater like a hog knows truffles on land, sniffing and snorfing to beat an uptown wine tasting, snout-plowing into the aqueous soil in the better spots to see what comes up.

Over successions of forests, generations of turtles and man, and epochs of insects, the fish swam and swam, learning the bay. Out of sight from all but a few creatures, and for most of whom the suddenly gaping mouth of a sturgeon was the last thing they saw.

His survey done, and so too his inclination to head into the ocean again in search of another Chesapeake, the fish made the rounds of his favorite bay-beds, feasting the whole year through. Shooting up or down the deep Susquehannok channel, he would dart up the rivers, passing the falls sometimes. As he grew, only big rains made deep enough water to pull that off, but he was now a big bull fish, and would push his torpedo nose damn well through anything these rivers could send down.

Older and larger, progenious of the Chesapeake sturgeon, so strong now he only flicked his mighty tail once to get from Potomac to Nansemond, the mighty beast began to feel like a dinosaur. He had feasted every feast and nosed every mudflat, every pebbled channel, every sandy bed through the bay and its rivers from mouth to headwater. Nobody else remembered the real good times any more, the pristine waters before the fire-makers had come. A few times he came close enough to watch these beasts, and on two occasions he had been spotted; the first had left a stone chip embedded just below his back fin. He had watched a few generations of these two-leggeds along the banks of the river that they would eventually call Powhatan's.

At one of these villages, the people caused a grove of walnut trees. The rains of late Autumn would wash down the decomposed but still bitter hulls, and though he hated it at first, somehow his taste grew to need it. And more often he found himself leaving the anonymity and safety of the deep to get the walnut scent. The first few times he was seen was by children who screamed and ran. Seeing nothing by the time they arrived, the parents figured the monster was another children's game.

Perhaps because he had grown so old and alone that he had grown bitter, the walnut grove and its astringent black brew drew the fish back again and again. Nothing else in the bay interested him anymore. On starlit nights he would gaze at the grove for hours. And one night he was watching trees heavy with nuts certain to be falling in droves within a half-moon. Suddenly, his tail twitched mightily, vaulting his body ashore. As if crawling through the eelgrass, his fins instinctively rotated, heaving his bulk to the closest tree. Gills burning already, his mouth gaped over the tree and inhaled the nuts, leaves, twigs and all in one gulp. Twisting on the rebound, flopping back, he was more awkward than he had been since the Pleistocene.

But he was also safely back in the river, so that the creatures who poured out of the lodges did not see the fish. They only saw the jagged bole of one of their trees, and quickly decided that the children had been telling truth, not tales. Few slept the rest of the night, but none had a plan to deal with a tree-eater who had created a goodly gully escaping to the water.

The next day the men canoed up and down the river, more of them running along the banks, all armed with bows, clubs, and spears. Kids followed and threw walnuts at every little turtle nose on the water. Nobody of any age bothered to attack the sly ancient boulder down in the mud a half-mile upstream.

That night, there were big fires, and the big fish felt like the darkness was not cover enough to guarantee safety. He laid deep and low, watching their glow and biding his time. For the old sturgeon had watched fire-makers, and knew about them as he did about most any other creature in the watershed a defining paradox. And for these smart monkeys, it was this: They only stick with something for any time if they have already been doing it forever.

Seeing as they had not guarded against giant riverine tree-eating monsters before, it came as no surprise to the sturgeon that the lights flickered out one by one until one night there were none. And on the second night of dark, well before the moon arose, he slipped in close to watch and listen. The fire-makers slept, but he was wary. Then weary, afraid to venture landward, but overcome with the dullness of watching nothing happen.

Again a spasm wrung through his spine so suddenly and strongly that his tail launched him over the bank. And again panic and burning gills could not convince his fins they were not feet, and the piscoid landing craft advanced from the beachhead up to the tree-line. Gills, eyes, and mouth all searing now, he lunged and bit the largest of the walnut trees.

Such a large tree that he bit and bit again to get through the dense, burled grain. Twisting his bulk, the branches finally snapped, but by now the burning was so intense he could not see, could not breathe, could not even tell where the shore was. Voices and bipeds exploded out of the bark lodges, and fires bloomed. A hail of arrows and shower of spears barely pricked his old fish hide, but a few hit gill and eye and the old fish turned out to be neither impervious nor immortal.

The village and its neighbors and relatives and all their dogs feasted on the monster, who the shaman had re-defined as a gift, for days. They brought hickory and smoked strip after strip of sturgeon, but still could not salvage it all. Smoke and noise and hordes of children kept buzzards at bay at first, but they began to circle in such numbers that the sky darkened and the ground became covered with their splat. Besides, the bears had arrived and seemed impatient, and there was no stopping the flies. All the fire-makers left except the shaman and his apprentice, whose noses were plugged against stench and flies with rolled tobacco leaves.

Nobody returned that Winter or through any of the following warm moons because of the smell. But as the winds blew colder and leaves shed their green and then their grip, the lure of walnut grove was too strong. Nobody wanted to face late Winter without a store of nuts. So they returned, and found the grove in need of a good harvest and some fire. The shaman drew a circle around the great skeleton and commanded fire not to enter. He pointed to the bones and the colossal mouthful of walnuts among them, which had already sprouted. Squirrels and every other animal had not eaten any, he said, and explained that his guardians had told him that the fish was not a gift of flesh, or one year's feast. The gift was groves. The leviathan belly-full of nuts, fertilized by his carcass, had spit out thousands of baby trees, and now all of the people were to take these seedlings and plant more groves. The ones that remained growing from this great fish, their roots making wood from his bones, could never be harvested for eating, though anyone would be welcome to take nuts for the planting.

Fire-makers brought walnuts from this tree far and wide. In time, nuts from the sturgeon grove became trees throughout the Chesapeake region. People don't depend on them the way they used to, but the civilized ones know that a winter without walnuts gathered and cracked within the family is a bleak one indeed.

***

Like the old sturgeon, no tree lasts forever. Before steel, walnut trees in particular had what it took to persist: offerings of food and wood considerably harder to cut and hew than the human attention span will abide in construction material. Not too long after Powhatan's river was re-named the James, fire-belching creatures dealt with walnut trees by girdling and burning them, knowing that walnuts liked the same rich loamy soils that they wished to transform into tobacco and corn. Eventually, though, the descendants of these folks took to turning the wood of the walnut tree into furniture. Cutting and polishing, the woodwrights would often find themselves looking at a grain that echoed the burly old sturgeon.

One tree, cut in the 1960s or 1970s, and maybe growing back when Virginians felt compelled to throw off British rule, became a plank and sat in a barn until my dad and his double-first cousin bought the wood to use. Other planks became furniture and frames and shelves. But the projects failed to consume the wood before he died, and I inherited some pieces. (By inherit, I mean that I refused to thrown them away.)

A year or so ago, I spotted a sturgeon lurking in one plank. I cut out the shape, but being human, was distracted and did not complete it. This past Autumn, when I should have been cracking walnuts, I got a job at the other end of the country. You may have been subjected to the saga in the critically acclaimed series of emails. In any case, the move forced me to jettison some things. Like most of the walnut boards.

But not the sturgeon. I snuck that into the little U-haul trailer along with some Hawaiian kamani and koa wood and some rocks that mean a lot to me, and high-tailed it down the road before my wife could object. Despite my human attention span, I could not give up on completing the sturgeon. The impracticality of moving a 30--pound hunk of wood, abetting an overland migration of a replica fish, well I have to admit that that aspect also appealed to me. Besides, sturgeons live in the northwest as well as the Chesapeake, so it made sense.

I worked on it some, and then one day it came to me that the migration was not quite done. I had always figured that it would eventually find its way to someone else, because most things I carve end up being gifts of one type or another, and I almost never know to whom when I start cutting. The occasion arose, I spotted it, and offered it as a gift from my employer to a tribe that was helping us out. Just common courtesy, and something for the high mukamukas to exchange.

Only it ended up being me, and not the boss many levels above me, who handed this fish to the leader of a tribe. Too nervous to speak, but pretty happy to see a journey started so long ago
and so far away end up with a recipient whose smile said the fish was home.

From the James to the Puget

To begin, here is the entire cross-country journey as it appeared in the wildly popular email series, "Mo-trek." It's the story of me, a Ford, and an orange trailer heading on the modern Oregon trail.


On the 22nd of January 8th year of the third Christian millenium, a non-descript expedition set out from the low ridge south of Plum Branch of Deep Run, tributary of the james River by way of Tuckahoe Creek, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. One white pick-up followed closely by a U-haul trailer. Listed on the trailer manifest were some hundreds of books, the Mo-bile headquarters of Cultural Landscapes, a bedstead of fine quality, three chairs, several hefty bags o clothing, wood that would be carved some day, a WWI ammo chest of prized rocks, maps rolled in maps rolled in maps, and various forgetables and unmentionables. In the bed lay a couple dozen linear feet of fine cherry and walnut purchased from an Ohio barn in 1976, various Hawaiian woods in various stages of kalai, a jug of windshield wiper fluid mom had left the day before, shovels, stone, tow chains, and so on. In the cab was a small bag with medicine and clothes, CDs, snacks, more books and files, primitive navigational aids, cell phone, my dad's ashes, an alidade, this computer, various machetes, survival gear, and of course more forgetable and unmentionable crap. And then me an a merrily-glowing misindicator (I hoped) of a "Check Engine" light.

In other words, your typical covered wagon-full of modern redneck nomad. Minus the Bud cans and chainsaw.

Westward up I-64, the James of the modern traveler, past Mr. Jefferson's University in the first hour. Upward over the Blue Ridge, and cutting south through the Shenandoah Valley on I-81, where trucker traffic picked up markedly. Divers semis, carrying everything from frozen chicken to speedboats, with Wal-mart and Fed-ex well represented. I began to suspect that historians will understand late American capitalism as an age of hyphenated abbrevinemes.

Grayness gave way to misty noenoe, then to splattery rain, sleet, and snowy bits. The valiant Ford kept above 60 even on the increasingly frequent uphills as I veered west back onto 64. Thankful that I had skipped the moonshine stands of southwest Virginny, I gripped the wheel and pushed on, stopping only to fill up the truck's tank and empty my own.

Far in the west of what was still just plain Virginia, I rounded a bend to see Waits Mountain, which appears in numerous Chinese and Japanese inkworks:

Ripple of whiteness
Fringed with black bristles of trees.
Diachrome beauty.

And on into West Virginia, that mountainous region torn asunder from the motherland during the 1860s, quite contrary to the Constitution, whose writers' progeny complained not. And the wind it whipped, and the gray it deepened, and the ice it pelted. Wending up and whipping down, I steadily passed the bigger trucks. At some point in the afternoon, consultation of the navigational notes showed that I had 500 miles to go that day, and not the 350 or so that I'd somehow taken into my head. Regrets about a 10:30 departure would not help, and I passed through Charleston (Capitol #2, if you count Richmond) right when All Things Considered came on. There are a plethora of public stations in that state due to the terrain, and although keeping track of their frequencies was impossible while also paying attention to the road, just tuning in to 88.9 worked for most of the way.

Night fell, but I pushed into Kentucky. The I-64 entrance to that state crosses a river with a prominent view of some huge stinking smoky industrial complex. After which, it gets better, as far as I could see. By 7 or 8 PM, I slid to a protracted halt in the entry drive of a hotel in Frankfort (Capitol #3). Watched most of "Smokin' Aces," featuring perhaps the best quick-change-artist gang of nazi punk assassins ever to appear on screen, and then went to Applebees, where Kentucky was on screen holding its own against the higher-ranked Tenessee, which is pretty much the opposite viewing experience.

I walked to the restaurant, although this was clearly not the intent of the planners of this sprawlplex. Outer suburban interchanges are a boon to those who travel with trailers: big parking lots son that backing up can be avoided, fuel stations sating vehicles and people unconcerned by sodium, and a predictable melange of eateries and stores. I walked only because I craved outside air, but lack of crosswalks and presence of roads built to freeway specs made it risky. I crawled up an icy, recently sodded hillside before skating back across to the hotel.

And then sleep. 498 miles down,


Day, the Second.

Awoke, scarfed coffee and pastries in the lobby, checked email again, grabbed more coffee, and took off for St Louis (which is not Capitol #4, although I could bluff most fellow citizens by claiming so). Beautiful blue skies, even the road-cuts resplendent with limestone earthtone.

As hotel brochures had promised, there was a route called the "Kentucky Bourbon Trail." Late the previous night, I had dismissed this as a cruel hoax. What government would sponsor a network of roads whose sole purpose was to get people from one whiskey distillery to another? Kentucky, that's who. They atone, or at least achieve a semblance of balance, by also featuring religious attractions in tourist and hotel-room literature.

So, since I really did have a shorter day in store, I took the exit that said "Wild Turkey." Besides, the coffee had me in a mood to pee, anyway. More truly American than the eagle, I would have been a miserable citizen not to pay homage. (And besides, as some of you know, I had a run-in with a wild turkey at Reedy Creek one time, and it was time to exact my due.) At the foot of the off-ramp, indicators of the much-vaunted whiskey trail disappeared. I went left as is my wont, but after a few miles took advantage of a wide spot in a narrowing trace to turn around. Back north of the highway, a few more miles took me to an intersection where another official-brown sign directed me rightward toward a wildlife center and Buffalo Trace distillery. I like bison almost as much as turkey, so I lit out. And in a few miles skidded to a halt just past a sign indicating a wildlife exhibit and distillery. Looping back, I wound a Kentucky Fish and Wildlife complex, replete with Wildlife Education center (Closed for the Winter), but no distillery. Fed up with Kentuckian trickery, I peed behind the closed restroom, just behind the Live Bait vending machine, and fled the state.



Rolling hills gave way to the Ohio River Valley and then flatness in southern Indiana and Illinois (where I was not about to diverge just to hit more capital cities). In the latter, I stopped at Wayne City, Wayne County, in dad's honor. Found a place to eat, but no place to pee, so skipped it and got back on the road, because my atlas made it seem realistic to visit the vast native city of Cahokia before coasting in to my cousin's house west of St. Louis. Peed at a couple of rest stops along the way.

Nearing St. Louis, I stopped at the last rest area in Illinois to pee again and check a map (and pledge not to drink so much coffee the next morning), only to learn that Cahokia by the bypass south of 64 was not Cahokia the Mississipian city. Unwilling to detour north for an unsatisfactorily short visit to that site, especially since it would put me in rush hour traffic, I just headed cousin-ward.

He and I fought like steroid-dosed wolverines when we were younger, and although I had looked forward to a cage-match to unlimber my driver's shoulders, he had a bad back. So we sat in a hot-tub and downed a couple of beers while the sun set. Later, I unloaded a couple of family heirlooms, we shot much breeze, but not each other.

Eight-hundred and something miles down, and maybe only 2200 to go.


Day the third.

Since he had the courtesy and forethough to buy a house on a cul-de-sac, setting out that morning should have been easy, but of course I got confused by the sameness of neighborhood housing, and wandered a while before reaching the right road. The onto a tributary of a tributary of I-70, which now replaced O-64 os the westward artery. Exiting to gas up again, I explored another exurb when signage again failed me. Then onto the highway again.

The weather was clear and cold. 9 degrees with a wind chill of -10. The Ford shuddered, but started alright, and ran fine unless I idled. So I worked through rolling country into flat again. Crossed the Missouri, down which a thousand giant ice lilly pads were floating (wish I could have stopped, but no doubt would have stood mesmerized for hours).

Through Kansas City (not even in the eponymous state, so not the capital as some may believe), and into surprisingly hilly Kansas State. Stopping more to get a highway map than to pee, and picking up speed as the climbing sections became less frequent and far less inclined. Cruising through Topeka (Capital #4), where the worst of the Kansas traffic slowed me not. Stopping again at a road cut in the Flint Hills to grab a few nodules--my host in Washington is a knapper. And then into the great flatness.



Stopped one town short of Hays, out of fear that gas would run out and leave me hotel-less. Then cruised into another exit ramp hotel. It had never topped freezing that day, and the skies were still crystal clear. Even though I turned off the heat in my room, though, the ambient temp of the hotel kept it warm all night.

Had a bit easier time crossing the street due to sheer lack of traffic, only to learn that food at a Mexican restaurant called "Carlos O'Kelly's" is as disappointing as you would expect. Really nice all-white staff, though. They were just as nice when I went back the next morning to reclaim the credit card I left there. So I hit 70 again at nearly 11 AM.

1355 miles down, and nearing half way.


Day the Fourth.

I had trouble getting out of that Hays haze that morning. Cable direct weather interspersed awe at the depth of midwestern freezing with dire warnings of three storms stacked up to smack shut all the northwest passes. No beating the storms, so no need hurry into the cold, right? There followed more weather watching, gear checking and so on until the sun was high up over those Kansas mountains to venture out and pack the cab.

Cell? Wallet? Keys? Yep, got 'em all, so pay up and leave that hotel behind, never having gotten in the hot tub. What a waste.

Trailer hook-up still tight? Yep, but the wire's just hanging there unplugged. How many hundred miles did I drive without trailer lights? At least the Check Engine light worked the whole way, I'm sure of that.

So plug it in and get going, and all that's left is to feed 70 bucks worth of petrofeed to the beast of burden.

And my wallet comes out for maybe the 10th time already, but the credit card is gone. Has to be at Carlos O'Kelleys, whose blandness would actually work better for breakfast, but I eventually bang on a service door enough to roust a kid more on the O'Kelly side. He led me through the kitchen (still no Carlos's in sight, big surprise), and upon explanation, Manager O'Kelly opened the safe and handed me my card, and I skated back to the truck and took off.

Kansas flattened mile by mile, and what with the clear roads I left interstate behind and made my pilgrimage. Uncle Maurice lived just over the Colorado line, and though I didn't want to haul a traler all the way dow to a farm now occupied by a stranger, I did visit St. Francis, Kansas, where his wheat and specie were banked. Burger and fries and drink for under 5 bucks, and the manager-cook-waitress' brother was the guy who ran cattle on some of elder Maurice's land.

I left, unable to learn whether the new owner or anyone else had capitalized on Uncle's scheme to open a wild-boar hunting preserve. Fair hunting, because patrons could only use spears. If anything, odds slightly in favor of the swine, since he planned to limb up all the trees and prevent primate escape.

And after a twighlit mis-tour of Denver (Capitol #5) sprawl, made it to the next cousin, also a son of Maurice the Elder. Some Mexcellent food that more than made up for the O'Kelly fiasco, and much good kitchen talk after. As at his brother's, there were invitations to stay, but needed to hit Salt Lake the next day, and felt nothing but urgenter as Cascade snow totals mounted. Before me lay the choice of steepness and more snow, or less steep and more wind.

1722 miles down, and over halfway there. Or so I thought.


The Fifth Day

Smooth sails call for a teller of tales to pass the time, and a free and easy passage appears only in teller's tales as a foil for something more interesting.

My choice--steep icy climbs over I-70, or braving mid-winter Wyoming wind--seemed clear enough upon waking. The trailer was heavily loaded and (according to Carlos O’U-haul) “Aerodynamic,” and I’ve never tried driving uphill in Rocky Mountain snow. Just to help keep the truck from blowing away, we deposited a couple hundred pounds of cast iron and hardwood in the form of a dismantled cider press. A gift from Maurice’s kids to a cousin headed toward Washington orchard-land.

So north on the plain east of the Rockies. Blue skies and clear road to Fort Collins, where there's a rest area with hundreds of brochures and cool displays and real people. Nice people mantled in grey-haired experience, one of whom grew up in Wyoming. And they smiled nicely and didn’t second-guess my freedom to choose, but figured that sticking to the interstate would be less troublesome than trying the scenic Route 287 short-cut to Salt Lake. Then the guy got online and told me about the advisory for 62+ mph winds on I-80, but reassured me that the road was not closed. Yet.

And the Wyoming grandmother related to me how the interstate planners said they’d plotted the shortest way from point A to B, but locals told them better to give Elk Mountain some distance, and just follow old Route 30. Heedless, the feds just shot their line across the flanks of Elk Mountain. And it appeared that on this day, I thought, Elk would be shrieking mad. But they fortified me with Colorado and Wyoming maps, reminders that it’s a long way between gas stations, general encouragement, and a cup of coffee that I took. Because peeing be damned, I had a long and windy road ahead.

So I visited my last Colorado urinarium, and hit I-25 north.

Mid-day brought passage into Wyoming, and increasing winds. Every once and a while, truck and cider press and books and leaf springs worked themselves into harmonic sways, but all it took was a slowing drift to stop it. Ice would show up now and then, and it got difficult to tell if a road was just wet or frozen. To my right, soon into Wyoming, there was a giant bison statue on a hill. To my left, the jutting mountains petered out, but outcrops appeared. Big bold boulders that would look at home in labor union posters of the ‘30s.



Struck a glancing blow on Cheyenne (Capitol #6), and was past it before I knew it, flying west on I-80, which turned out to be almost entirely populated by semi-trailers. More with the “England” name than anything else, and of course fed-ex and wal-mart, and the flat-beds loaded with farm implements on previous days now carried giant mineral and gas extracting machinery.

Lunch in a Laramie Applebees. Snow and white folks as far as the eye could see.

After that, lots of exits were just to ranches, and even those “with services” were caked with ice. The Ford has 4WD, which worked, allowing me to eliminate that from the list of things that would make the Check Engine light so persistent. I filled up at a snowy, blustery hilltop, stopped to pee at a rest area on the most exposed knob for miles and miles in every direction, and gritted teeth on the downhill run, where I went into a real skid for the first time. Came out of it, and before long, we were in a “valley,” which is the local word for “vast plain, reputedly edged by mountains.”

Levelness does not translate to smooth sailing unless you are going where the wind wants you to, and it wanted me to turn almost 180 degrees. And the trailer it swayed, and the snow it blew (true, what they said about all it takes is a half inch of snow to hide the road when the wind whips up in Wyoming). And I just fell in with the train of semis in the right lane, and we all crawled when we had to.

Getting near Elk Mountain took a long time. And as we rose on the flanks so did the wind, powerful currents on either side of a ridge and buffeting turbulence on top. But, as we all should have learned in high school:
4WD x (25 mph + cider press + ton o’ books) = Traction

So be patient, listen to Miles play “So What,” and try to let loose the death-grip on the wheel now and then. It also helps to have one of those air-activated heating pads for your back.

But again, the downhill run had some bad ice, and every once in a while some other-trucker would come flying past everyone. Charmed vets of the 70’s glory days choosing just the line that gets you past 50 vehicles in a spray of slush, or just some guy with no brakes or sense? You never know until you pass the rig jack-knifed in the median.

I saw one whose back door had been ripped open and its cargo strewn through the snow. If I’d had a CB, I would have heard this exchange:
“I heard it was Injuns. They was looking for rifles, but ended up hitting a truck load of maternity clothes.”
“Dumbass. That wasn’t no Indians. They know a government mule from a clothes horse. It’s Mormons, dipshat, they dress up like Indians to fool dumshoots like you. Who the hell else would steal maternity clothes? Geez! You freaken kids get your CDL and you think you’re a trucker. You don’t know sh…”

But I didn’t hear that. In the side open spaces, all it took was a cell tower every hour or so to get reception, and I talked with family and friends. Meanwhile, I just stared at the truck in front of me, and the next wrecked semi, and told myself it was okay because I was nearing a town where I’d be able to get gas and news. And sure enough my little orange and white rig pulled into a station. Filled up and got cola caffeine, and found out that while I would not be totally through the wind and ice zone for about 40 miles, the road behind me was worse that the one in front.

I was about another mile down the road when I figured she was ignorant or malicious toward coasterners like myself, because the patches merged and we were all slogging across a sheet of ice. And no turning back. Despite snow barriers, the wind whipped snow across the road in ten thousand little snakes, making it hard to see tracks of the truck a length or so in front of my hood. The snow-blow whited out everything, but only up to about a foot off the ground. Above that, the wind blew away everything, and the sun shone clearly in our faces as this truck-train drove west. Fifteen miles at least, we were on solid ice, rarely topping 25MPH. Intermittent clearings showed up around dark, but I staid a right lane conservative until hitting Rock Spring well after dark, abandoning any plan to reach Salt Lake that night.

Ate Mexican food prepared by Mexicans, but that tasted what I ate 30 years ago, before suburban Gringos discovered that there was more than one kind of chili powder or tortilla. Then found what proved to be the most expensive hotel of the entire trip, but was too tired for the hot tub. Daily Show news and out.

Somewhere past 2,000 miles, but who keeps exact figures at times like that.

Day, The Sixeth

Up early and moving, because WWW and TV both say snow’s a coming into Utah. But I’m nearly through with Wyoming (to be sure, it’s about done with me also), And so I tank up the truck, but not myself. Because who needs caffeine when there’s pseudophedrine?

Last night, the Mormon leader died, by far the biggest news in these parts. He was ancient and revered, and now the church of Latter Day Saints has it’s first succession in the full-blown Media Age. But the relevant point here is ethnobotanical. Did you know that the real deal, the not-pseudo Ephedrine is a plant commonly called “Mormon Tea”? Hmm.
[Editor – Since moving, have been as isolated from news as was saturated in a wi-fi-cableTV hotel cell, and so consequently unaware of Mormon succession except that Romney fizzled as badly as Giuliani. Interesting too that Polynesians denied the Mormon church the right to taboo their kava drink. That is all.]

So since the highway was much better, truck and trailer easily slalomed into Utah, which had a rest area to rival Colorado’s. No displays, but a woman at some sort of 360-degree console. Thankfully, Utah is a map-giving state, and with that in hand I inquired about conditions ahead, and she showed me camera views on the computer, which looked a little grim, but not worthy of retreat. Explained that the snow would be in the canyon mostly, while a guy I took for a local leaned against the console and nodded. I stood off a ways, because you never know when somebody might be all hopped up on that M-tea, but the woman was clearly in control, and I worried not.



Spit out of the mountains north of Salt Lake, and heading up I-15 (this side’s I-25) to I-84, the terrestrial Northwest Passage. Running up through Ogden with mountains out the passenger window. Then further out an old building, sides-a-painted with welcomes to Nana and returning missionaries. Sweet people.
Then opening country, and before long, Idaho. Wending up valley plains, occasionally climbing small ranges, now and then buffeted by the wind. Roads often wet and sometimes icy, but so far less than the day before, it was just a drive in the park.

Some mountain shown in the first real sun of the day. Not snow-capped, but snow all the way down. I watched it for miles and miles.

Gleaming dogtooth wedge
Underbiting inky clouds.
They bleed sun-white snow.

Potato fields on either side, with these cool irrigation things that look like really long axles with a dozen wheels. And then I spotted pahoehoe, and immediately called a Hawai`i Island friend to celebrate. Kept crossing the Snake River all day, or so it seemed. Ate pizza at one of those everything-stations on a rural exit. Talked with family. Did not take the exit to see the Japanese internment camp from WWII, or the Owyhee Mountains. Swept past Boise (Capitol #7), and on to its western sprawlburb, Nampa, to a hotel in a field that had sprouted crops a couple of Springs ago. In front was a 21st Century strip-mall. Cabo-taco, cellular outlet, sub shop, and some even more non-descript places. Across a 6-lane road with no crosswalk was a Wal-Mart. So of course I walked over there later to provision for the next day’s mountain crossing.


And on the 7th day, I rested.

8th day, too, for that matter. Stranded so far on the edge of Boise that the cement hadn’t set on the sprawlburb. Snow was not so bad there, but was piling up by the foot in the Blue Mountains ahead, and I was not about to go play tourist with a trailer.

So Weather media confirmed that it would have been just as bad or worse to have struck south to hit the California coast. Besides heavy snow in the Sierras, there were repeated landslides headed up through Oregon, and the possibility of another lengthy shut-down of I-5 (which happened last in December, when I interviewed for this job). The Pacific just kept dumping on the Northwest, which meant snow in the mountains. Rumor had it that on Wednesday, the ninth day of my trek, there would be a lull between systems, and I might manage to squeak through the mountains and into the less frozen Columbia Gorge, which was trending to be no more than moderately windy.

I knew this because Oregon Dept. of Transportation has weather data down to like 10 mile increments. And time was plentiful. And one upside of the sprawlburbs is that the hotels have fast wireless internet, so that for a couple days I could go through the weather data and traffic cameras, getting familiar with I-84. That, and look for places to live.
Then brave forays into wind-driven snow and across the toxic tundra of a Wal-mart lot. And into the latest version of that chain. To get some food. Beer. Underwear and socks. Tire chains.
But mostly, just to escape hotel air. That, and to walk where walking was not intended. Which is either civil (engineering) disobedience, or symptomatic of white trash going feral.

Then each morning, coffee in the lobby to my heart’s skittery delight. (Somehow, this hotel sans restaurant came up with some variation of hot breakfast each morning. First it was scrambled eggs and sausage. The next day it was some sort of rubbery white discoid emblazoned with a yellow bullseye—eggish, but clearly not a yolk and albumen.) But always, decent coffee that I could drink cup after cup of without worrying that I’d have to pee on the roadside during a blizzard.

Then more road and weather watching, and watching yesterday’s comedy news shows, followed by Futurama. Occasionally some CSPAN, and the feeling of solidarity that comes from knowing that only you and a few dozen people are watching.

Then working through a list of apartments and rooms for rent. Arriving in Olympia during the 2-month legislative session and trying to rent a place is like trying to belly up to the bar at the annual Drunkards Convention.



The Ninth Day

For several days, it had been clear that this morning was the chance to get beyond mile 2,567. The last storm had passed late in the 8th day, and the next was not expected until afternoon. And so it was early out of bed, check and re-check the gear. Drinking coffee early, and filling up as much as I could stand of the breakfast.

And then back on I-84, the much-improved Oregon Trail. Leaving Nampa, a gloriously easy stretch of flatland ran to the border. Crossing the Snake River yet again, I set my sights on the Columbia homestretch. The less shiftless, cut straight through the frickin’ Cascades kind of river. Besides, the Snake turned into Hells Canyon if I kept on.

Also, the only open pass was I-84 through the Columbia River Gorge. Which I did not take lightly, but Oregon DOT’s milestone weather web showed mild winds.

No, the hitch would be getting over the Blue Mountains, where I would surely run into snow, and need chains. And risk sliding into or being slid into by the trucks that still dominated traffic outside the cities. And it turned out that I needed chains before then, hitting icy runs disappearing into fog-snow.

So pull off onto the chain-up area so thoughtfully provided, and put on chains. These places are on long straight uphill runs, which is good because the load of cargo careening out of control cannot get far uphill, and alert chainers don’t get crushed. I actually waited until the second or third place before putting on the chains, because my only companion on this trek was the fear that truckers I will never meet would think I was a wuss.

But I aint too stupid, and I put them on when iceless patches got rarer than Giuliani stalwarts. And then just after the next hill was a big melt, and my challenge was to not go over 30-mph with chains on, as per translated Chinese instructions on Wal-mart chains. I now aimed for the ice patches, hoping to conserve chainage.

No dice. Impatience and a warming trend forced another pull-off to remove chains. Next time I pushed it, on the principal that all safety messages are wildly exaggerated by attorneys in the liability department. (Like that Check Engine light, the one with the annoyingly resilient bulb.)

But not so. Even with no experience, this southern boy eventually figured out that the loud whapping was problem, and I removed a less intact set than I’d attached. Noticed gouges in the sidewalls, but no holes or leaks. And in this way made it to LaGrande, gateway to the Blue Mountains. Never have I seen so many trucks. Hundreds of semis lining the road and clogging the truck-stop lot. I filled up with gas, met incredulous Canadians who’d been told by the pump-monkey that “Chain Restriction” meant they’d need chains for their truck and trailer.

Then, walking into the station/store, I was just in time to hear the lady announce “All Westbound travelers: the Chain Restriction has been lifted.”

No coffee, snacks, or urinals. I was out the door and in the truck in a few seconds, yelling the good news to the Canadians on the way. We hit 84 and they passed me before long, but I felt no shame. Never did attach chains again. Worsening weather—“snowing hard and continuously” in Oregon DOT parlance—helped road conditions. A few inches of snow worked over by semis (many still chained) beats black ice any day.

I recognized Meacham, but didn’t see the traffic-cam, and then it was all downhill. Conditions improved rapidly, and soon the Columbia appeared. The road cleared. Truck herds thinned out at the I-82 interchange, and flat, iceless straightaways let me fly along Gorge-ward. Sunbeams and NPR beams lit the land.

The Columbia River Gorge scarps up on the Washington side long before Oregon lifts much above water level. But eventually you descend into the Gorge. Despite the spotty radio reception, increasing rain, and decreasing light, this too was a fun run. Waterfowl and riverboats, islands and dammings, and every once in a while a road slithering up some side canyon.

Downhill and in the dark on the north shoulder of Mount Hood is no place to be when a couple days of pent-up coast-bound truckers race downhill to Portland. After the driving behind me, though it seemed decidedly non-epic, just clench jaws and wheel, and run.

And in the western sprawl of Portland, I made camp for one last night. Ahh…sweet penultimacy.



Finally

Loading up one last time. Checking hitch connections and trailer door one last time. Eyeing tire pressure one last time. Filling up Continental style and snagging road coffee one last time. Peeing and paying one last time.

Veered north before Portland proper, racing into Washington near Fort Vancouver, a Hudson Bay outpost. There and at Kalama (big surprise), Hawaiians settled about as early as any other outsiders. Never met these Northwest Hawaiians yet, but it made me feel more at home already.

Sharing the road with more logging trucks than I’d ever seen, the last miles went easy. Again through mists and lilinoe, punturated by sunbeams now and then.

And then truck and trailer cruised into Olympia and to the U-Haul place. Stowed the contents in Locker 320 (which necessitated the first back-up in a couple thousand miles or so), unhitched, and arrived at Scott and Jama’s in the mid-afternoon. Their aloha since then has been epic, but that tale will come another day.

So that’s it. 3,085 miles and 10 days after starting, from Tuckahoe in the James-Chesapeake Watershed to Watershed Park above Budd’s Inlet of Puget Sound.

Those of you still reading deserve something better. An epiphany or at least an arrival at some pithy summary. Maybe a denouement. I could uminate and culminate, or just culminate. But I’m just a simple guy—not that bright (at least not without some more ruminating and editing), and not that French.