Side Track to Ship Rock

A long time ago the Dine were hard pressed by their enemies.  One night their medicine men prayed for their deliverance, having their prayers heard by the Gods.  They caused the ground to rise, lifting the Dine, and moved the ground like a great wave into the east away from their enemies.  It settled where Shiprock Peak now stands.  These Navajos then lived on top of this new mountain, only coming down to plant their fields and to get water.

For some time all went well.  Then one day during a storm, and while the men were working in the fields, the trail up the rock was split off by lightning and only a sheer cliff was left.  The women, children, and old men on the top slowly starved to death, leaving only their bodies to settle there.

Therefore, because of this legend, the Navajos do not want any one to climb Shiprock Peak for fear of stirring up the ch'iidii, or rob their corpses.

- From http://www.lapahie.com/shiprock_peak.cfm

It's early July, 2010.  I drive out from my sister Jane's house in Flagstaff in the morning and do a last-minute swing by Late for the Train to fill my travel mug with espresso and pick up a tin of their decaf Portofino Blend.  My dog Tanner is settled into his cushioned perch in the back of the Jeep, and we have close to six months of travel around the western United States in our rearview mirror.  This is our final push back to Illinois.


I fully intend to high-tail it across I-40 East to Albuquerque, then up I-25 to Rte 24, a pleasant shortcut that will bypass Denver and take me northeast over to I-70 at Limon, CO.  From there I'll stay on I-70 East all the way back to the town I'm currently calling home.


Of course this doesn't happen.


At Gallup, NM, I need to stop for gas.  I pull off the interstate fully intending to make this a quick stop:  gas and leg-stretch only, with a few minutes' stroll around the edge of the parking lot so Tanner can have a sniff and a pee.  No distractions.  No detours.


I take the exit for Rte 491 North and immediately miss the turn for the frontage road that would lead me to the row of chain restaurants and gas stations lining the interstate.  I've come into Gallup from the north on this same road, so I know there are gas stations to be had further up the road.  But there's a lot of traffic, and all the gas stations I see are on the left side of the road, so I keep driving.  Soon I'm about two miles out of town and there's a gas station on the right side of the road.  Gas prices are pretty good there, so I stop.


I walk in to pre-pay for my gas, passing a Sno-Cone kiosk on flattened tires that's parked right next to the store.  Sounds refreshing, given the early afternoon head and lack of air conditioning in my truck, but it's not in operation.  


Gallup is a few miles from the southern edge of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.  The gas station is part convenience store and part trading post.  All the patrons are Navajo except me.  The older Navajo woman behind the counter greets me solemnly and takes my money.  I go back outside and fill up.


At this point, I could backtrack to the interstate in a matter of minutes.  Or I could continue north on 491 and see what happens.  Forgetting my 'gotta haul ass' vow from a mere ten minutes ago, I turn right out of the gas station and go north.  The Ship Rock is up there near the Colorado border, and I am compelled to see it again.  I also realize that I've been spoiled with the high-elevation travel I've been doing for most of the spring and summer.  Once I reach the high plains east of Denver, I'll be in midwest summer humidity hell.  I wish to prolong this as long as I possibly can.


I saw Ship Rock Peak for the first time in September, 2009, when I drove out to Flagstaff from Illinois to hike down into the Grand Canyon with Jane - and to adopt Tanner from Jane and her husband, Seth.  Although Ship Rock is rumored to look vaguely like a clipper ship at full sail, I just couldn't see it, even by squinting and calling in all the powers of my overactive imagination.


As I pull onto the highway I rationalize my decision.  "Maybe the mountain will look more like a ship if I come at it from the south."  Besides, the barren desert around Ship Rock Peak is broken up by some grand rock formations that are littered about like a giant child tossed a few of his toys on the floor then toddled off and left them.  Suddenly I really want to see them again.


So off I go.  After a jog to the northeast at Tohatchi around a ridge of mountains, the road is fairly straight.  Sections are under construction to make it four lane.  Sometimes there are hills.  Speed limit is 75.  I fly past a couple of villages populated with the beige, one-story, modular government houses of the Navajo Nation.  Most of the dirt yards have hogans for ceremonies, doorways always facing east.


Soon I have passed my favorite mountain on this road, the one that looks like the inside blew out and left it hollow.  I spy the Ship Rock in the distance to the northwest.  Once I'm abreast of the rock formation, I pull over and contemplate its spires while Tanner contemplates the fence posts.  It still doesn't look like a ship to me, clipper or otherwise.  

Ship Rock Peak, New Mexico

Bookman's - A Love Story

'The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.'  -Saint Augustine

My love of travel is tied directly to my love of reading.  This runs exactly parallel to the moving and traveling I was exposed to from infancy.  I learned to read before I was in kindergarten, first from imitating the words that went with the pictures on any given page of the Uncle Wiggly books my Dad read to me when I was little and later, as my Mom tells me, from hanging over the back of Dad's chair as he read the paper every day.  In school I lived for the day the RIF (Reading Is FUNdamental) van would come.  When my brother and I were old enough, our parents let us ride our bikes to the library int he summer; what a treat to walk into that bright, high-ceilinged room knowing that I could pick any book there.  I was never far from a stack of books.  I am still never far from a stack of books.


When I was a kid it was books, as much as the traveling we did as a family, that exposed me to the possibilities waiting for me in the world beyond the couple of counties my young life revolved through.  With a book in my hand, I could go anywhere.  I would become so engrossed in imagining the action and descriptions in the book I was reading that everything happening around me in this world fell away completely.  Every page I turned was a mini-vacation, a brief trip to other places and lives different from mine.


That's why I'm so excited to be where I am as I write this entry.  I'm sitting at a table in the newly reopened Bookman's store in Flagstaff, Arizona.  Bookman's is not merely a used book store.  It's a treasure, a godsend to readers with appetites as voracious as mine.  They give fair prices in exchange for an eclectic variety of books, electronics, music, dvd's, and tchotchkes, plus they have a cafe that sells some pretty friggin' good coffee and espresso beverages.  They've been closed for about a year, because last winter the heavy snows here in Flag caused their roof to collapse, ruining nearly every piece of inventory they had.


Bookman's has been an Arizona institution for something like twenty-five years.  There are five other locations scattered about Tucson and the greater Phoenix area.  I can't adequately express the allure of this place.  You'll have to come check it out for yourself sometime.  Suffice it to say that, on every trip I make to Flagstaff, I stuff a duffel bag full of books and lug them all the way here for the sheer pleasure of being able to get trade-in money here so I can buy more books to drag home.  I can't think of a better way to merge my love of travel with my love of books.


Another reason Bookman's has given me to love it this past year:  When they lost their inventory and had to close, they did not lay off or fire their employees.  Instead, they asked the employees to volunteer for the charities they support in exchange for continued receipt of paychecks.  As it became evident that they would definitely reopen in the same location, they sent their staff into the communities around Northern Arizona, scouring collections of private citizens in order to procure inventory with which to stock the shelves.  In this precarious economy, is that not a beautiful thing?


I've been here for about three hours so far, and I'll stay another hour till they close.  The books I brought from Illinois are still in the car.  This was mainly a reconnaissance mission.  I wanted to reacquaint myself with the place and spend some time perusing the Southwest/Arizona and travel sections, both of which are so extensive that two hours of close examination only got me about halfway through them.  The list of places I plan to explore in person is greater than the resources that will get me to them right now.  In the meantime, the words written by others transport me there, orienting me in my own life as surely as a compass.  

St. Louis Lambert Airport, 18 Jan 2011

Because I'm carrying Christmas presents and a fuzzy faux fur coat roughly the size of Sasquatch's illegitimate love child, my suitcase is a pound and a half over the fifty pound limit.  'Take out a pair of shoes or jeans,' suggests the friendly agent at the counter where I'm checking my bags.  I unzip the nearest exterior pocket and extract the first pair of shoes I can get my hands around, then step back.  The numbers on the scale fluctuate for a second, then settle at exactly fifty pounds; who knew running shoes weighed so much?  I cram the shoes into the last three cubic inches of space left in my backpack, scribble name, address and phone number on one of the paper tags provided by the airline, and loop it onto the handle of the suitcase as I roll it over to the TSA luggage scanner.


Because I'm carrying Christmas present wrapped in shiny paper, the power cord for my laptop (which has a little square plastic box containing the built-in surge protector), and a stainless steel travel mug in my backpack, the backpack gets sent through the machine at the security check twice.  I stand at the mouth of the belt, waiting to retrieve my things.


Because the TSA agent is in no great rush to run anyone's personal items through the machine, I get a few extra minutes to inspect and contemplate the new x-ray scanning device that is all the rage in airport security these days.*  It's comprised of two big, dark blue boxes, maybe three or four feet square by seven feet tall, with a gap of a couple feet between the boxes.  There's a mat on the floor in the gap.  I'm guessing the suspect, err, victim, err, scannee, err, innocent passenger, stands on the mat between the two machines while they do their thing.  


On one side of each box is a flat screen.  The screen on the western-most box, where I stand waiting for my shoes and carry-on items to pass scrutiny, faces into the terminal.  The screen on the east box, where you enter from the ticket counter, faces directly towards the line where passengers wait for their boarding passes and IDs to be checked.  The screens are not huge, maybe 17", but big enough to be seen clearly from the line.  


The key in the x-ray scanner is turned to 'stand-by'; it's not in use today.  Aside from the length of time it would take to funnel every passenger through this one machine, I can see why this technology upsets so many people.  It would be one thing if the screen was placed so that only the agent or agents running the machine were viewing the image, but here, the image of your x-ray-naked body will be flashed at hundreds of people when you get scanned.  And people will look, because it's a screen, and we Americans as a people are programmed from birth to automatically train our eyes on any screen flashing in our vicinity.


That's not security, to me.  That's poor manners, and lack of respect for basic personal privacy.  Think about it - my backpack is getting a more private screening than I would get if I was in the big scanner right now.  


Don't get me wrong.  I have titanium pins in my ankle that set off the metal detector on the rare occasions that the national security level is puce or whatever.  I'm okay with being pulled to the side for a pat-down, I'm fine with being wanded by an agent wielding a portable metal detector, but neither of those actions require my junk being shown to the masses.  This to me crosses a line.  I submit that if the TSA wants us average folk to willingly allow our images to be shown to our fellow travelers in this manner, they should be required to wear - as uniforms - skin tight body suits of a color and material that leave nothing to our imagination.  That would at least level the playing field a little bit.


My shoes, laptop and backpack finally squirt through the little opening of the security device.  I grab them and cruise over to a nearby row of chairs, reassemble myself and remove the travel mug.  I find a nearby coffee purveyor and purchase some espresso happiness.  Then I go sit like a good little sheeple and wait for my plane.




* BLATANT PLUG:  For some hilarious merchandise relating to the enhanced security measures, see my cousin Rick's Lucid Interval shirts, mugs, etc. on Cafe Press:  http://www.cafepress.com/TheLucidInterval?utm_medium=cp_social&utm_source=addthis&utm_campaign=CafepressShop

Travelogue: June, 2002

Flagstaff, Arizona.  It's late June of 2002.  About six months ago, I moved from Chicago to a house here that my sister, her boyfriend and I shared.  Now we've moved out of the house.  All my worldly goods are secured with a padlock in a storage unit south of the railroad tracks.  The little in-law apartment I've rented in Sedona won't be ready for a week.


My cat, Oliver, is staying with my sister and her boyfriend in their new apartment.  My German shepherd, Shuby, is with me.  We're in the Jeep.  It's in the mid-80's and sunny.  I've got the top down so I can enjoy unimpeded views of the deep blue sky stretching out over my head in all directions.  I'm wearing a pair of cutoff denim shorts and a long-sleeved white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sunglasses, and a blue bandana on my head to keep my hair out of my face.  Shuby is wearing his braided leather collar.  His tags jingle when he moves.


Shuby and I are on our way south out of Flagstaff.  We're on 89A, heading to Oak Creek Canyon.  The two-lane road rolls past turnoffs for the airport and Fort Tuthill, continuing on through part of the Coconino National Forest, where sheep and cattle spend summers grazing in the shade of the Ponderosa pine forests.  The Forest Service has been working hard in this area already, clearing away slash that, should a wildfire strike under the right conditions, would cause the flames to spread fast enough to wipe out the entire thirteen miles of the canyon in less than an hour.


The air is cool, fragrant with the scent of pine.  Shuby and I stop near the vista point at the head of the canyon, but I pull to the side of the road instead of parking in the lot.  I leash him and we walk along the shoulder a short ways, then cross over to an open area near the viewpoint.  We climb the short slope, and Oak Creek Canyon opens out in front of us, much narrower at this end than it is farther south, at Sedona.  Oak Creek is one of the few places in this part of the state where water can be found - above ground - throughout the year.  I can't see the it from this vantage point.  The road, visible as hardly more than a grey ribbon, disappears through the canopy of trees that line both sides of the road twelve hundred feet below us.  


A raven croaks at us with his raspy voice and launches itself from a nearby tree.  As he swoops past us out over the canyon, I can hear the wind rushing through his wing feathers:  whoosh, whoosh.  Ignoring the raven, Shuby sniffs around, pees on the base of a pine tree, and we walk back to the Jeep.  When I open the door and unleash him, Shuby leaps into the passenger seat and takes up his favorite position for descending the switchbacks: sitting straight up, looking straight ahead, nose pressed to the windshield.  Tongue lolling out as far as it will go to one side.  Eyes and ears alert.  A huge doggie grin on his face.  From what I can tell, he seems to consider riding down the switchbacks - any set of switchbacks - an extreme sport.


We round the right-hand curve that leads to the first long downhill slope, and I downshift to save my brakes till I really need them.  I love driving these switchbacks.  The road is steep and narrow in places; the curves are corkscrew-tight.  The Jeep hugs each curve like a long-lost friend. Only in a few places are there any attempt at guard rails.  It amuses me that, in the Midwest, no expense is spared to put up guard rails at the slightest little hillocks in the road.  Here in the West, there's no such attempt to coddle or protect motorists.  It's assumed that if you're driving, you know how to keep yourself on the road regardless of how precarious it is.  If you don't know, tough.


I'm about halfway down when I glimpse a flash of bright color in my rearview mirror.  I round a curve, slowing a bit to allow whatever is behind me to come into full view.  It's a guy on a road bike.  He's got on one of those spandex racing outfits like they wear in the Tour de France.  It's canary yellow with black stripes and has a lot of words printed across it.  As soon as I see him, suddenly the rest of them are there, too - about twenty of these guys altogether, riding in a tight knot.  Wearing shorts and jerseys of bright primary and secondary colors, like the first guy's:  red, blue, green, orange, more yellow.  They're not going that much faster than I am, but they have momentum.  It's more dangerous for them to try to slow or stop at this speed, on this type of sharp decline.  I bring the Jeep almost to a stop and pull off to the side as much as I can to let them pass.  The leader flashes a peace sign at me, and in the next instant they're fluttering past my like butterflies, shirt fabric whipping in the wind, thin tires droning on the pavement.


By the time I've reached the fish hatchery the air has begun to change.  When I reach the bridge at Pumphouse Wash, near the bottom of the switchbacks, it's almost ten degrees warmer than it was when I left Flagstaff.  The hot, dry air permeates me to the core, relaxing me as I drive the next few miles to the Cave Springs campground.  I plan on camping there for a couple nights.  Shuby leans back in the seat, props his right front leg on the door handle and tilts his head up to get a deeper whiff of whatever scent he's caught on the breeze.

The Ritual of Packing

In his book, The Art of Pilgrimage:  The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred, Phil Cousineau outlines the preparations people of different cultures and religions have made throughout history when preparing to go on a journey or pilgrimage.  Some shave their heads.  Others don specific items of clothing that will mark them as pilgrims upon the paths they travel.  Most seek out blessings from their priests, masters, or spiritual leaders.


He also interviews people from our modern culture about what they do to prepare for a trip.  Some read all they can in advance about the place they are going, or listen to music specific to the country or region.  Others put everything in their daily lives in perfect order before stepping out the door.  Cousineau himself has a 'ceremonial meal', then calls a friend or 'an esteemed elder' who has already traveled to the place he's going.  He says, 'Each of these conversations helped me focus on the upcoming journey and lent each of them a pleasant weight.  For me, they acknowledge the ancient belief that I would not be alone in my travels if I had the blessing of an elder.'


My favorite of the customs he mentions is what he calls 'the Russian way':  once you're packed and ready to go, you sit on your luggage for half an hour.  This way, you not only have thirty minutes to relax before you leave, you can use that extra time to figure out whether you've forgotten to pack something.


Moving as often as I have serves the purpose of keeping me to the barest minimum of possessions.  With a narrowed choice of options I'm less likely to go overboard and pack more than I need (or more than I can carry).  Does this pair of jeans/socks/underwear have holes in them?  No?  In they go.  It's difficult to attach ceremonial significance to these ordinary choices and actions, regardless of what significance the trip may have for me.


Upon second thought, though, I realize that I do engage in a series of ritual actions that I perform before each trip, long or short.  I pile everything that I plan to take with me in a central location (usually the bed or the family room couch) prior to tucking it all in place in my bags.  I check to make sure my luggage tags are still attached and intact.  I straighten up and set things right in the house.  I start the dishwasher, or clean and put away any stray dishes.  I make sure the litter boxes are clean and there is plenty of food, water and clean litter for the cat sitter.  I gather up food, toys, treats, bed and leash for my dog so he'll be comfortable at my best friend's house (when I fly) or in the truck (when I drive).  I don't leave the house without the keys in my hand.


I believe that the mode of travel I employ determines the import I place on packing.  Air or train travel limits me to what I can fit in a specific number of bags, regardless of where I'm going or how long I'll be gone.  When I travel by air, too, I generally know in advance where I'll take my meals and where I'll be staying while I'm gone.  


It's different when I pack for a road trip.  The need for self-sufficiency is much greater when I travel by car.  On a road trip I keep the destination and estimated date I intend to arrive in mind, then point the Jeep in a given direction and leave nearly everything after that to chance.  Only rarely do I plan in advance where I'll go, how many hours I'll drive, or where I'll stop on a given road trip day.  I go till I'm tired, then find a place to camp or sleep in the truck.  I carry food and water with me so I can eat when and where the urge strikes me.  When I see something that intrigues me, I stop and check it out.  This method of travel may be more free-form and organic than hopping a flight, but it requires a great deal more forethought during the packing phase, as well as an enhanced degree of care and attention during the loading phase.


If there's nothing extraordinary or particularly sacred about my preparations today, it's probably because I perform them by rote.  Without thought to what it means to be doing them, what it means to be going on yet another trip.  Perhaps I've been traveling so much I've begun to take travel, and the act of getting ready to leave, for granted.  If I pay more attention, maybe I can find the special in the mundane. 




Are there any rituals that you perform before leaving on a trip?  Leave your thoughts below.  

Genesis, or Nature vs. Nurture

By closest estimation, I have lived at least forty-two places throughout the course of my life thus far.  Three of those can be disqualified because they're places I lived before I graduated from high school:  my parents were calling the shots.  

The other thirty-nine moves are all mine by choice, by chance, by circumstance, or by some combination thereof.  So it's safe to say that in my adult life I've moved, on average, once every seven months.  This does not take into account all the other traveling I've done.  Add it up and all this movement might start to look like an illness - if I didn't enjoy doing it so much.

In the past several years my restlessness has only increased.  I've taken to pondering, at idle times, what it is within me that has caused this wayward behavior.  The genesis, you might say.  The origin.  Those little twigs of disquietude lying deep within me that I've touched with the flame of curiosity and turned into a roaring fire.

Here are a few things that have occurred to me:

- The hospital where I was born is about thirty miles from the town my parents lived in at the time.  That means that I took my first road trip when I was a mere few days old.  Thirty miles is a long way when you're an infant.

- Before I turned a year old, my dad took a new job in a town ten miles away.  We moved.  I can imagine myself as a toddler, playing among the boxes while my mom and dad packed, the smell of cardboard permeating my young brain.

- My grandpa on my mom's side of the family owned an Allis Chalmers dealership when I was small.  He sold farm implements and tractors to farmers all over the county.  Much to my grandma's consternation (and, undoubtedly, to provide my mom with a little relief), he would often bundle me up and take me with him when he had to go to St. Louis to pick up parts.  The car trip was two hours one way.

- On my dad's side, my grandpa owned a business delivering gasoline in a tanker truck to the farms surrounding the town where he and my grandma lived.  He got a kick out of taking my brother and me with him on his rounds.  From the time we were very little, he would let us climb the ladder and get on top of the truck to 'help' him when he refilled from the main storage tank.  I probably breathed more gasoline fumes than were healthy for me at that age, but it was a smell I associated with Grandpa so to me it was good.

- When I was four, my parents loaded me and my brother Rob, who was five, into our big old Buick for one of the longest and most ambitious road trips our family ever embarked upon.  My first real memories are from things we saw and did while on this trip.  Over the course of a couple months, we drove from Illinois to Texas, traveled on to Southern California, and came back through Las Vegas, Arizona and Colorado.  It was the summer of 1971 and car seats for children were unheard of.  Rob and I were small enough to lay in the back floorboards of the car with our heads on the 'hump' in the center.  The warmth, the motion of the car, and the sound of the tires on the pavement below were as soothing as any lullaby.

There are plenty of other instances I could give, but the ones I've listed here are a few of the earliest.  So:  Is my case an argument for nature, or for nurture, as Charles Darwin would put it?  Was I born with this love of - and need for - travel and continual motion?  Did the circumstances of my most formative years cause me to become the way I am today, or did they merely bring out what was already embedded deep within my genetic structure?  I like to think it was a lot of both.

Airports

"When I was very young, and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.  When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.  In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.  Nothing has worked.  Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.  The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.  In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum.  I fear the disease is incurable.  I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself."  - John Steinbeck, 'Travels With Charley:  In Search of America'

In three days I'm leaving again.  I'll do laundry on Monday afternoon, pack Monday night, toss last-minute toiletries into my suitcase Tuesday morning after I use them.  An hour's drive west along I-70 will put me at Lambert Airport in St. Louis.  After a quick detour and a dash to change planes in Albuquerque, I'll touch down in Phoenix.  I'll hop the shuttle and be in Flagstaff within twelve hours of leaving the house.


Moving about the country - and the world - is so easy these days.  Sure there are annoyances that come with air travel:  the long lines for the TSA security checks, the enhanced pat-downs and invasive scanning machines, the crowded planes where you're forced into situations with strangers that are so intimate your grandma would blush.  But seriously.  Even with all those marks against it, there's no other form of travel so simple, straightforward and fast.


I like airports.  I'm one of those nerds that gets apoplectic if I'm not at the airport exactly two hours before departure time.  I rush impatiently through the lines to get my suitcase checked and have my person and carry-on possessions scanned.  


Once I've passed into the captivity of the modern air terminal, though, I'm left with an hour or more to do exactly what I please.  It's the absolute best form of free time, devoid of demands other than showing up to get on the plane at the appointed time.  I take a deep breath and turn off the thinking part of my brain.  I grab a leisurely espresso or snack, people watch, read, write, browse the magazine racks, or stare out the windows.


And yes, I did say I check my luggage*.  Part of the fun of air travel for me is getting on and off the plane with the absolute minimum of effort.  I waltz into the terminal, hand my suitcase into the care of the airline employees, and move along unencumbered.  I love not having to schlep my crap to the farthest reaches of the airport.  I get a perverse pleasure out of smugly watching from my window seat while everyone else crams their stuff into those inadequate overhead bins.  And when I arrive at my destination, I love slipping off the plane empty-handed while those same people are struggling to remember which bin their bags are in.


*For the record, 99% of the time I travel on the one airline that still doesn't charge you extra for checking bags; if I'm on a different airline I suck it up and shove my bag in the bin with everyone else's.



And don't get me started on the people-watching opportunities in the baggage claim area.   I make a game of seeing what strategy people adopt when waiting for their luggage to appear:  Do they hover around the opening where the bags come out, or stand elsewhere?  Do they stake their claim right next to the carousel, or horn in at the last possible second when they realize their bags are about to pass them by?


When I was growing up all of our family vacations were road trips.  Travel by car (sans air conditioning), with parents and three other siblings, usually pulling a camper, was hot and tedious and slow.  Perhaps it wasn't as tedious as the horse and buggy days must have been, but at times it didn't seem far off.


Once in a while as a special treat (and, ultimately, because it was a great source of free amusement for us kids), my parents would take us to the airport in the city we were visiting.  We never flew anywhere; we just went to gawk at the airplanes and people watch.  This was during the glorious 1970's when anyone could meander around the airport and visit all the gates - no tickets, boarding passess, or excuses of any kind were required for being there.


We went to the airport in Denver once, just to see the double-decker Boeing 747s take off and land.  I was maybe four.  


The time that really sticks with me, though, is when we went to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.  I was in fourth or fifth grade.  I had a vivid imagination that tended toward the romanticization of absolutely everything.  As we watched the planes taxiing along the runways, I was immediately nostalgic for places I'd never been, things I'd never done.  Dark, exotic places that were completely unlike the tiny Midwestern town I grew up in.  To me, each of those airplanes signified a hundred different dramatic leave-takings and ecstatic arrivals where loved ones swept you into their arms and cried with joy at your return.  Just like in the movies.


Inside, we strolled through the international terminal.  I'd never seen so many people from other cultures and countries anywhere, much less in one relatively confined space.  I spied an Indian woman in a brightly colored sari.  To me she was the height of elegance and poise, with her one brown shoulder bare and her gold slippers.  


At that moment I became acutely aware of the greater world outside the rural town where I lived and the US itself.  Not just as an abstract concept experienced vicariously through others, but as a reality I desired to see for myself.
  

The Fidgety Pilgrim

"For my part I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.  The great affair is to move."  -Robert Louis Stevenson

This may sound strange, but the only way I can stay grounded is to travel.  Travel is a necessity in my life, like fresh air and strong coffee.  I have come to believe that I am addicted to travel the way others are addicted to whiskey, or crack cocaine, or Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream.  I get the shakes if I go longer than three months without seeing the inside of an airport.  


Had I been born in another time or place, I might have been a gypsy, or a bedouin.  I might have lived in one of the American Indian tribes, like the Hopi, that shifted locations according to the seasons.  I might have been Meriweather Lewis, or Magellan, or any of a thousand others who were lucky enough to explore territory that was as yet untrampled by the masses.


I spent much of last year, 2010, traversing the country.  For most of those miles I was looking out from behind the wheel of my well-worn and trusty Jeep Wrangler.  The rest of the time I was sitting on airplanes.  All of my trips took me from my current home base in Central Illinois to the western half of the United States:  Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico.  I'm a sucker for the West.


I logged more than 20,000 miles on my vehicle between mid-February and late December of 2010.  That's excessive, even for me.  Yet the more I traveled, the longer I was on the road, the more I wished to stay on the road.