Storm in the Rockies

 

 

            My only companion on this trip is my dog, Dozer.  Until a few minutes ago, he was mainly concerned with chasing varmints along the trail.  Earlier this morning, as we broke camp, I was concerned with the looks of the sky, which was blanketed in thousands of cotton balls.  This cloud pattern, sometimes called “fish-scale,” indicates the approach of a weather front.  I figured we had several hours before the rain hit, and by that time, we would be at our next camp near Blue Lake just a short 3.5 miles away.  I was dead wrong.

            At just past nine o’clock in the morning, I am crouched between a cluster of spruce trees afraid for my life.  A truly wicked and nearly stationary electrical storm is parked directly above us.  We are at about 11,000 feet in elevation, just below a ridgeline, near an avalanche clearing, but under the cover of a healthy forest—a good spot.

            I keep repeating this to myself: “It’s a good spot.” But, every half-minute or so another one strikes—an eerie yellow or orange flicker illuminates the forest followed quickly by the pop and roar of thunder. 

            Dozer has wedged himself under a tangle of dead branches a few feet in front of me.  His ears are back and he’s staring at me for reassurance.  With each crack of thunder, he flinches and lowers his head as if to prepare for the blow.  He doesn’t understand.

            I understand.  I understand that I’ve now counted at least four strikes within a quarter of a mile from our spot within the last fifteen minutes alone.  I understand that the rain is getting heavier, not lighter.  I understand that the lighting is getting more frequent, not less.  I try to stay positive.  Getting struck by lighting is highly unusual.  But, with each forced positive thought the negativity seeps back in.  How unlikely would it really be in this situation?  Not all that unlikely at all, is the answer that I dreadfully know.

            The rain is falling straight down in widely spaced heavy, punishing, drops that pound the dirt around us with audible thumps.  I look around, and as I do, I catch the direct sight of a lightning strike.  Between the trees up the hill I see the big bolt cut a short, fierce line from the cloud base to the ridge just a few hundred yards up-slope.  Two seconds and then the slam of thunder beats down.  As close as it appeared I’m demoralized by the realization that there have been several strikes much closer than this one.

            I look at my watch and my wedding ring.  I consider removing them to prevent severe burns should I be struck.  The thought does not seem ridiculous.  Dread.  I look away.  An orange flicker lights the spruce tree to my right, my arms go up over my head in a reflex as the thunder bellows, reverberating through the canyon below.  I look at my ring again, this time thinking of my wife back home.  Sorrow.

            Dozer is shaking now.  A chipmunk scurries within striking distance—the chance of a lifetime!  He glances at it, but lets it pass.  He looks back at me.  Eyes wide and ears back, he’s terrified.  I wish I can put him at ease, but he senses my fear.  We both wait:  Me sitting on my sleeping bag sack, Dozer curled under the tree branches in front of me and a little downhill.

            I glance over to my left.  Ten feet away is the edge of the avalanche clearing.  A bright flash and almost simultaneous thunder, this one is within a couple hundred feet.  I say out loud several times, “if you see the flash, you haven’t been hit.”

            The rain is picking up now.  Big heavy drops are still falling perfectly straight down.  Still, there is no wind, no breeze.  Still, the storm is stationary, relentlessly unleashing its awesome fury.  I realize that my pack and clothes are quickly getting wet.  Although the rain is of lesser concern than the lighting, I need to do something, anything.  Just to my right is a level area perfect for a tent, so I jump up and get to work.

            With the rain falling harder now, my shaking hands assemble the poles quickly.  Another orange flicker sends me to a crouch.  The crash of thunder commences as I raise my arms over my head.  I can feel the static in the air.  As I resume setting up the tent, another flash and another crash.  This time I don’t flinch.  I keep working as fast as I can.  Dozer is beside me now eagerly waiting for shelter.  The rain is increasing, a pounding torrent now.  The forest seems burdened by the punishing storm—branches are drooped and dripping.  Flowers are being battered.

            The tent is up in record time.  Dozer knocks me out of the way in a mad scramble to get inside.  I dash for my sleeping bag sack and backpack and throw them both in the tent and dive in.  As I pull the, still somewhat dry, sleeping bag from the sack, Dozer, very wet, rolls on it.  After a minute of claustrophobic maneuvering, I finally manage to get into the bag.

            I realize at this point that I am actually at greater risk of electrocution now than before.  Outdoor survival guides will tell you to avoid laying flat on the ground in an electrical storm.  But, I have decided that my false sense of security from shelter trumps my better judgment.  I know better, but I still feel safer inside the tent.  Now, less than two minutes after erecting the tent, it begins to hail.  “That was a good decision,” I say to Dozer. 

            Four hours later the rain finally stops, and the thunder is but a faint rumbling from the distant east.  We timidly emerge from the tent.  The forest is drenched.  Wildflowers are shredded.  The ground is a matrix of tiny streams of rainwater running down to the canyon floor.  Across the canyon, I see waterfalls where there was only dry gullies before.  The stream at the bottom is a raging torrent.

            As I pack up the tent and prepare for the remaining mile and a half to Blue Lake, I feel beat down but exhilarated.  I feel like a survivor and yet so vulnerable to the forces of nature.  I stop for a moment to take in the renewed peacefulness of the forest and mountains.  I look up to a patch of brilliant blue sky.  I feel renewed now in this wilderness.

            We proceed on up the ridge and Dozer spots a ground squirrel ahead.  Off he goes on a rampage after it–he never does catch them.  He’s back to normal.  We made it.

 

            It used to be that you could roll into Las Vegas on a whim any time and find a room on or near the strip for around forty bucks.  Not anymore.  We found that out, my brother and I.

            Kevin had called from Phoenix about a month earlier and said he decided to move to Seattle, where I lived.  After ten years in Phoenix, I guess he finally got tired of dry heat, dry skin and dry earth.  So, he decided to head for the Northwest where everything is wet and moldy.  It was typical Kevin—no middle ground.

             He asked me if I would fly down to Phoenix over Memorial Day Weekend and help him tow a U-Haul trailer back to Seattle.  Of course I would.  I love road trips, and there was a big, remote swath of America that I had not yet traversed–Nevada from South to North.  It wasn’t the fastest route, but 2,000 miles or so on Interstate 5 was out of the question.

            After I arrived we busted through the Phoenix blacktop boil-and-wave heat to the U-Haul office to pick up the trailer.  Here, we experienced the first of what would be a long string of comical mishaps and difficulties:  We got six blocks from the U-Haul office when the empty trailer flew off the hitch and slammed into the back of the truck.  Back at U-Haul the break lights on the trailer stopped working.  Since we had the only trailer still available, all we could do was tinker around and try to fix the problem.  An hour later, the lights were working again, the trailer was securely hitched, and we were on our way.

            Finally packed and heading out of town, we made a wrong turn and discovered how difficult it can be to pull off an “Austin Powers” style multiple-point u-turn with a trailer.  We quickly drew the suspicion of a police officer and got pulled over.  The cop looked somewhat relieved and yet disappointed as he walked up to the window, right hand on the holster.

            “Did you know the tags on your trailer expired four years ago?”

            “Uh, know.  We just picked it up from the U-Haul office a few hours ago.  Isn’t that their responsibility?”

            “It’s your responsibility as long as you are driving it.” The cop looked around a bit, and looked at us a bit—a couple of 20-something white kids with scruffy faces.  His attitude lightened as he told us that human traffic smugglers like to use old U-Haul trailers to sneak illegals into Arizona.  He was, apparently, prepared to open up the trailer and find a bunch of people stewing in their own messes.  Instead all he found were boxes.

            “Seeing as the expired plates deal is not really your fault, I won’t bother you with a citation,” he said. “You’ll have to decide if you want to hassle with U-Haul or take the chance of being pulled over again somewhere on your way up to Seattle.  Have a nice trip.”

            We rolled down the Nevada side of the Hoover Dam road about eleven that night, expired plates and all, into the lights of Vegas.  By two in the morning, we had checked every hotel on or near the strip to find that there was not a single room available in the whole damn town.  At the Golden Nugget, we couldn’t get a room that night, but we were able to book an early room that would be available the next morning at ten. 

            “We’ll take it!”

            Kevin looked around, dead tired. “Well, we have about eight hours before our room is available.  Where are the nickel slots?”

            “Screw that,” I snapped.  “I’m taking my hundred bucks and heading for the blackjack tables.”

            An hour later, out a hundred dollars and seven more hours to go, I went looking for Kevin and found him passed out in an empty lounge, head back, mouth agape.  He looked dead.  Nobody seemed to notice, and if they did, they didn’t give a damn.  Only in Vegas.

            We passed the night away in a sleep-deprived delirium of obnoxious slot machine sounds and weak gin-and-tonics interspersed with fitful naps on slippery Vegas casino lounge chairs.  When we finally got our room I was too tired to sleep, so I went to the pool.  The Golden Nugget has one of the most pathetic pools in Vegas, but it was absolute bliss.  After returning to the room, I slept like a bump-on-a-log for a good eight hours and woke up smelling like roses at one in the morning. 

            We checked out and were off by two, headed north on two-lane out of town.  Like a light switch we passed from the flash and dazzle of Vegas into the complete blackness of a moonless pre-dawn desert.  All was totally dark except for what was in the path of the narrow beam of our brights.  Before long, the only radio we could get was the Spirit station playing Christian Rock on FM, or talk of UFO sightings on AM.  We chose the AM.

            This was beautiful desolation.  We were the only vehicle slicing through this part of the desert for miles and miles in either direction.  The black of the desert night brought on the mystery of it.  To the right, or east, we knew we were paralleling the boundary of a massive military installation.  We had visions of hidden-away extra terrestrials and secret weapons, complemented by the crack-pots on the radio.  To the left, or west, was more desert.  Farther west still was Death Valley.  Behind us, fading further and further from us in distance and thought, was the nausea of Las Vegas.  Up ahead were hundreds of miles of pure, raw, American West.  Beautiful desolation.

            Around sunrise we came to the first real town since Vegas.  Tonopah, Nevada is possibly the most remote town of any size in America outside of Alaska.  At the four points of the compass, Las Vegas was now 206 miles to the south.  Reno was 230 miles to the west.  North 250 miles was Winnemucca.  And, 170 miles east was Ely.  In the middle of these great distances was Tonopah, a place where tumble weeds roll, people look at newcomers with a crooked eye, and you wonder how in the hell one makes a living here.  I thought this town must be the image that Easterners who have never been West envision when they think of an American desert town.

            Hours later, on our northward journey, we briefly left the desert and climbed over one of Nevada’s many sub-ranges.  We went from the scratchy desert to an aspen forest in a few turns, and just like that, we were back down the other side, through the tiny Nevada town of Austin and back into the desert where we soon ran over a rattlesnake in the road as a buzzard carved big circles in the sky above.

            Another hour or so and we came to Interstate 80.  A brief 50 mile jaunt west on I-80 brought us to Winnemucca.  In Winnemucca, we gassed up and jumped back on northbound two-lane.  Sixty miles later, just south of the Oregon border, solidly in the middle of Great Basin nowhere, a tire on the trailer blew out.  It was a Sunday afternoon, we were 60 miles from the nearest town with services, it was 95 degrees, and we passed another vehicle about once every ten minutes.  There was nothing to do but wait for something, anything.

            We got out and walked around a bit.  We threw a few rocks.  Beautiful Granite Peak rose in the distance to the southeast.  There were no cars and no buildings in sight.  It was hot.  Just to pass the time I decided to do some sunbathing… in the middle of the highway.  I walked out into the road and laid down on my back, right on the dashed yellow line.  With the warmth of the pavement at my back, I stared up at the blue sky.  It was total silence.  There was not even the faint whisper of a breeze over the dirt.  I knew I didn’t have to watch for cars because I would hear the whine of tires from a mile away.  I laid there.  Right there in the middle of the open road, in the middle of the wide open desert, I just laid there and stared up at the sky, and listened to the absolute silence.  It was a complete and total silence that I believe few people ever experience.  Even in the mountain wilderness, there is usually sound… a breeze rushing through the pines, the soft rush of a creek, the singing of a bird… Here it was absolute silence and it was stunning.  Beautiful desolation.

            I heard one vehicle approach after about 15 minutes and I got up and moved to the side of the road.  As the car rolled by, the passenger, on older lady, stared wide-eyed as if they had just seen a monster, for who in the world would take a nap in the middle of a highway?  About 15 minutes later, another car approached, and I could see the light rack of the state trooper.  We gave him a slight wave and he stopped.

            “They didn’t give you a spare?”

            “Nope.  It’s re-treaded tire, too.”

            The cop shook his head in disgust. 

            “I’ll call a tow service for you.  You’re sixty miles out, so it’ll take ‘em about an hour to get out here.  On a Sunday, out here, it’s going to be a helluva bill for U-Haul,” he said with a smile.  “Uh, you guys don’t really need me to stay here until they arrive do you?”

            “No, we’ll be all right.”

            He stared a bit at our expired tags, shook his head again, and then took off without a word.  An hour or so later, the tow truck arrived with a spare, and we were on our way again by late afternoon.

            Across the border now into Oregon, we had spent the previous fourteen hours in Nevada.  We had traveled the state the longest way possible, from its southern tip to the northern border.  Now in Oregon, we remained in remotest American desert.

            When people think of Oregon, they think tall trees, long Pacific beaches, maybe the white point of beautiful Mount Hood.  All that is true on the west side of the Cascades.  Southeast Oregon is a different world.  It is one of the driest places in North America, and one of the most sparsely populated.  The artificial state border changed nothing for we continued for hours and hours through the Great Basin desert. 

            Our narrow strip of pavement turned westerly just as the sun was grazing the desert horizon.  Gradually, as the day closed, we passed other vehicles with more frequency.  With the increase in traffic we were transitioning from the gut of the empty West into the more peopled Northwest.

            We rumbled into the great town of Bend, Oregon after dark.  Five Redbulls down, we stopped for gas and more Redbulls and continued on.  Eighteen hours in from Vegas, we still had a good six or eight hours of driving to Seattle.  There would be no stopping until the finish line.

            Beginning our ascent over the Oregon Cascades, the brief appearance of the nighttime stars were now concealed behind a bank of clouds.  As we climbed higher it began to snow.  Then it snowed harder.  And, then it was a total whiteout.  It was Memorial Day Weekend and I recalled just a little earlier that day, I was lying on my back on the hot pavement of Nevada highway in 95-degree desert heat.  Now, here we were, just a few hours later driving through a snowstorm over the Cascades.  There were trees now, something we had not seen in great numbers since Phoenix, and snow was collecting on them this day before the start of June.

            Cresting the pass, we crossed into the Oregon of people’s dreams.  Big trees and big mountains were all around us.  The snow soon turned to rain before it stopped altogether.  We were back on dry pavement now as we headed toward the Pacific, but the air was full and heavy.  That barrier, the Cascades, changes the very nature of air, for on this side, the West side, it was saturated, cool and refreshing.

            Through the city of Portland and then north on Interstate 5, we finally arrived in Seattle at four in the morning.  After one run-away trailer, a break light malfunction, a suspicious cop, an expired license plate, a sleepless casino night, a flat tire, a helpful cop and a tow truck, one freak snowstorm, and enough Redbulls to keep my heart rate up for a week, we finally pulled into the Emerald City.  We had passed through the beautiful desolation of the American West, from one extreme to the other.

 

 

 

Hello!  If anyone has been watching out there, I am sorry for the long absence.  But, there is a good reason for it:  I have been feverishly working to launch a new division to my company, Backroads Bluebird Boxes.  Please check out the new website Boxes4Bluebirds.com ! Of course, we still have TopGlobes.com where we continue to add some great new maps and globes.

Why bluebird nest boxes? Well, my mom has been a bluebird nest box monitor for almost ten years now, and after asking her some questions, I realized what a good online retail product that is. There are about 100,000 of these nest boxes purchased each year and growing. Since she already had a good design I decided we could create a production method and a website in fairly short order. So, here we are! The website is up and running, we have bluebird nest boxes in stock and we are ready to go.

As we get closer to Spring, and then Summer, as the weather begins to warm, and as the days get longer, we start to look forward to those nostalgic sights, sounds and smells that remind us of our free-swinging childhoods. The crickets chirping at night. The sound of sprinklers in the evening and lawn mowers in the morning. The smell of fresh cut grass. A dip in a lake or stream. A walk at night in our sandals. I could go on and on. Oh, I almost forgot about the arrival of the Spring bluebird!

We are already seeing Mountain Bluebirds near our production shop in the mountains, yet still there is a thick blanket of snow on the ground and more on the way. The seasons blend and overtake each other in this way. First a balmy February day almost warm enough for shorts. Then a bluebird! Then some buds on a tree…. Then, a crisp bite to the early fall air. Leaves turning. A few early snowflakes.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a tropical climate. A place with white beaches, blue waters, and palm trees where the sun’s rays and the water’s waves are always warm. But, there is something rejuvinating and renewing about the changing of the seasons that we enjoy. I think I’ll stay here and enjoy it with arrival of our bluebirds in the Spring and the first snowfalls of Fall.

The Long Walk 

Many of us hold a fascination and appreciation for the epic expeditions of the past.  People like Shackleton, Cook, McKenzie, Perry…  These are names we associate with daring voyages into little known voids of geography.  We admire them for their almost super-human perseverance and determination.  Despite our knowledge of the danger, pain, loneliness and death that they faced, we envy them for having had the opportunities and the bravery to set out towards that blue horizon at the end of their worlds, step over that line, and continue into the gray vastness of the unknown, and back again. There is one thing that most of these undertakings had in common:  The element of a deliberate expedition–the planning, the financing, the recruiting of a troop of willing co-travelers. 

Not all expeditions of historic proportions and achievement, however, were born out of planning, and one of the most remarkable true-life stories of human travel falls in to this category. In 1941, a Polish man by the name of Slavomir Rawicz, along with 6 others, escaped from a Siberian prison labor camp in northeastern Russia and walked south.  Equipped with only some furs, home-made moccasins, an axe, a knife and some bread, four of them managed to survive their extraordinary trek for over 3,000 miles south all the way to the safety of British-controlled India. 

Their epic journey, covering almost a year, is exceptionally remarkable.  They succeeded through determination, discipline and luck even though they made decisions that should have been fatal to them all.  Perhaps adding to the intrigue of this feat is the fact that it was unplanned, an act not of deliberation, but of desperation.  They were not seeking, they were fleeing, and this adds an intriguing element to this story that is not found in other epic journeys that we know of. 

The story was published in 1956 and then re-released in 1997, in a book titled “The Long Walk.” There is some dispute over the authenticity of the story which is not surprising.  It is hard to imagine the struggle they went through, and because they were fugitives in communist Russia, there is no other documentation of their journey other than the word of Rawicz.  But, Rawicz did not seek out a channel to tell his story.  He only reluctantly allowed it to be presented to the world 15 years after his escape. 

The skeptics’ arguments seem to be rather week.  There were certainly other undocumented escapes from Siberian gulags where millions of people were put into slave labor in the early and mid 20^th century—some escapes would have been inevitable.  Most of these other fugitives were probably either re-captured, or perished in the wilderness of empty Russia.  But, some of them must have made it out to safety, against steep odds, and with more than a little luck.  Many skeptics have attempted to prove the story untrue, and they have failed in their efforts.  It is easy, after reading the account, to say “this can’t possibly have really happened.  There’s no way they could have survived.”  And, yet, we know that human beings have achieved feats like this in other more well-documented accounts.  We know that truth is often stranger than fiction.  Would we believe the story of Lewis and Clark if it were their word only?  Would they have believed James Cook if he had stood up and claimed what he accomplished without the accompaniment of documentation?  No, and yet, those feats were real.  

I read the book in two days and I know I will always remember it.  It is a phenomenal story.

My first entry of this blog was about Teira Del Fuego.  In that post, I made a reference to Ferdinand Magellan, one of the world’s most revered explorers.  I had always known Magellan to be the first human to circumnavigate the world.  I have always considered that to be probably the greatest feat of human exploration, including our landing of the Moon.  But, I recently learned that he may not have actually rounded the earth.

 

Magellan, like most explorers of his time, was motivated by economics.  We like to think that the early explorers were motivated purely by adventure, pulled into the unknown by a wanderlust or innate desire to discover new lands.  But, even in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Capitalism was the primary motivator.  Ocean-going exploration in this time was driven by the spice trade in the East Indies (Today’s Indonesia and vicinity).  The spices, herbs and other exotics of the Far East were highly prized products of social stature in Europe, and the trade of these goods was big business.

 

Between the early 14^th Century and early 16^th Century, the products of the East Indies reached Western Europe by way of a complex system of sea-going and overland traders.  One of the main trade routes would see the cargo make its way across India, over the Indian Ocean to East Africa, up the Red Sea, into the East Mediterranean and on to Europe.  Each segment of this journey was controlled by a different group of traders, the price marked up a little each time the cargo changed hands (much like the cocaine trade from South America into the United States today).

 

During this time, Venice, Italy became one of Europe’s most prosperous cities, for the Venetians would receive this cargo from the East Mediterranean traders and control its distribution throughout Europe.

 

While Venice was enjoying its fortunate geographic position, Portugal was stuck on the other side of the continent, separated by rugged mountains, and facing west out over the little known Atlantic.  So, naturally, Portugal, motivated by economics just like the rest of Europe, looked to the sea as a way to compete.  They knew that, if they could reach the East Indies by way of sailing around Africa, they would open up a new and powerful trade route that would flip the economic distribution chain in Europe on its head and put Portugal, not Italy, in control of the spice trade.

 

Portugal achieved this feat when Vasco de Gama rounded the southern tip of Africa.  After de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan led a number of forays around the Cape of Good Hope.  This, historians claim, represents Magellan’s first leg of his global circumnavigation.

It was many years later that Magellan became obsessed with reaching the East Indies by sailing west, not east, through what he believed was a southern passage through the New World.  He finally got that chance sailed through what is now called the Strait of Magellan in Tierra del Fuego, across the massive Pacific (which he is credited with naming), and the rest is history.  Or is it?

 

The problem is that there is a “missing year” in the well-studied and documented history of Ferdinand Magellan, the year 1512.  The prevailing historical opinion is that, during 1512, Magellan made an unauthorized trip to the southern tip of the Philippines.  This has never been proven, however, and there is no real historical record of such a trip.  Magellan’s status as having been the first to circle the globe depends on this being true.  If he did not make this trip, then there is a small section of the Pacific that Magellan never crossed.

 

The other, more minor and more well-known, misconception is the fact that Magellan did not circumnavigate the planet in one trip.  Rather it was the combination of his earlier work sailing east from Portugal with his later expedition sailing west.

 

Regardless of historical certainty, no one can deny Ferdinand Magellan’s place in history as one of the most remarkable, relentless and determined explorers in world history.  The suffering and hardships that were endured on his westward journey are hard to imagine:  Men were literally dying on board, succumbing to starvation and scurvy.  They ate rats, leather and sawdust to keep alive.  Most of Magellan’s men wanted to turn back at various points in the expedition and they conspired to commit mutiny on several occasions.  One of Magellan’s five ships vanished in the night, turning up in Spain many months later, it’s crew having placed the captain of that boat under confinement and sailing the vessel all the way back across the Atlantic.

 

Magellan was killed in a big misunderstanding in the Philippines and never made it back to Europe to enjoy his sensational accomplishment.  But, his last remaining vessel (out of five) was eventually sailed back to Spain along with all the journal entries from the voyage that provided us with a rich account of this amazing voyage.

I could have been Alexader Supertramp.  A couple of different decisions and circumstances and I could have been just like him, striking out on my own to the West.  Just to see.  Just to explore.  Just to experience the landscape and satisfy my wandering soul.

 Years ago I read the article, Into the Wild, in Outside Magazine by John Krakaur, who lives just a few miles from me in Boulder, Colorado.  I then read Krakaur’s book of the same title.  And, last night I saw the movie.  It is a story that connects deeply with me.  For underneath the surface of my suburban life, just barely underneath, is a wanderlust something fierce.

 Wanderlust.  When I was a kid, about 11 or 12 years old (still a time when we rode our bikes without helmets on, and parents didn’t put their offspring into a protective bubble at all times) I used to try to ride my bike to the mountains from north Denver.  I had no knowledge of maps.  I just knew I wanted to go west, into those mountains that I loved so much.  Each block I went west the mountains got closer and I felt more free, more exhilerated. 

I never made it past the barrier of Hwy 36, the Boulder Turnpike, just down the road from where Mr. Krakaur now lives.  But, by the time I got there I could see individual pine trees on the ridgetops of the foothills.  I could almost smell the pine needles.  I could almost hear the clear water rippling over freestone creekbeds.  I gazed into those mountains wanting to go further just for the sake of going further.

 As I aged, the intensity of this exhileration faded.  Distances were shortened when behind the wheel of my car and the mystery of it all faded with the onset of my adult knowledge.  But, it’s still there.  There is still a primal urge to strike out into the unknown, break the shackles of structured life, burn the mortgage statements, sit under the sun and the stars, go wherever looks interesting.  No plan, no maps, no fear.

 I even shared a fascination of Alaska with Mr. Supertramp.  The last American frontier.  The last true American wilderness.  This is where wanderlust for us American kids who love The West and the mountains naturally leads.  The ultimate freedom.

 Yes, I could have been Alexander Supertramp. 

But, perhaps my destiny is more like that of Edward Abby.  Abby freed his wandering soul while also keeping a fingernail grasp on his family, his home, his relationships.   Yes, maybe like Abby, who roamed the deserts and the mountains for days or weeks, then returned home to dream about his next walk in the desert, his next float down the river.

I want to go to West today.

The Open Road and The American Dream

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The window is down.  Chile Peppers are on the radio.  I got an open bag of chips and a cold Red Bull.  The open road stretches ahead with no other vehicles in sight for as far as I can see.   

I’m happy.  There is no other place I would rather be than right here behind the wheel of my pick-up, cruising through the American landscape. 

What is it about the open road that I love so much? 

It’s the whine of high-speed rubber over hot asphalt, the warm summer air blasting past my open window.  It’s an open sunroof and sunshine on my shoulders.  It’s my bare foot on the pedal.   

It’s a straight-arrow two-lane cutting a line through the red desert.  It’s a leathery hitchhiker.  It’s a rattlesnake on the road.

It’s the smell of diesel and the sound of idling truck engines at a humid rest stop in Texas.  It’s the rhythmic “cli-click… cli-click” of my tires over the seams in the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge at night.  It’s railroad tracks and the Colorado River through Glenwood Canyon.   

It’s the blue-black horizon of a prairie thunderstorm up ahead.  It’s the grill of an 18-wheeler emerging through a wavy mirage.  It’s the sparkling ocean appearing for the first time around the bend.   

The open road is fleeting nostalgia.  It is independence.  It is freedom. 

The open road is the American Dream.  The traveler is in control of his way forward, unconstrained by the schedules and expectations of others.  The highway is rigid and unchanging, yet it enables the freedom of the journey.  The driver stays on the paths provided but controls his route, his pace, and his ultimate destination.   The open road is a symbol of opportunity for those who are willing to drive optimistically into unknown and unfamiliar landscapes. 

My life is the open road.

The cropped map in this blog’s header is a slice of a mysterious land.  Tierra del Fuego!

 I though it most appropriate to begin the Dusty Globe blog with an entry about a place that can legitimately be described as the edge of the inhabited world both literally and metaphorically.

 Tierra del Fuego.  The Land of Fire.  Megellen so named this land as he was the first European to pass through its wicked waters in the 16th century.  The land of fire it is not.  It is a land of windswept, cold earth.  It is a land of ice and stark granite faces.  It is a land of fog-encased islands.  A land of fire… not so much.  But, Magellen can be forgiven, for he never walked this land, only viewing it from the ship-eating waters at the southern transition between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Split between Chile and Argentina, both countries label this area in a sort-of miscellaneous way:  “Teira del Fuego, Antarctica, and South Atlantic Islands.” It is identified on the map as if it represents whatever is still farther down there, beyond where civilization needs to go.

 Ushuaia, on the Argentina side, is the southernmost permanently inhabited town in the world–the edge of civilization literally.  Further south, still, over on the Chile side, is a matrix of rain-soaked islands, glaciers, fjords and temporate forests.  Few people ever visit this southwestern reach of Tierra del Fuego because it really is almost impossible to get to.  The waters are too trecherous for most boats.  The land is blocked by the icy Darwin Mountains.  By air, adventurous pilots will find few suitable landing places, and any flight path will be full of hazards:  High mountains and perpetual winds on the east; Almost constant rain, fog and mist on the west.

The cartographer’s view of this place shows a landform that tapers and narrows to the south until it is no more.  The lone traveler, heading south from Buenos Aires will cross ever larger tracts of lands with ever fewer people while the continent itself becomes narrower as it reaches for the Antarctic.  Warm vinyards become cooler ranches.  Cool ranches become cold sub-antarctic grasslands.  And, then the sea…

 From Santiago, Chile, the experience would be remarkably different.  On the windward side of the great Andes, the southern traveler would encouter thickening forests while fingers of the Pacific reach into the mountains, creating great obstacles.  This traveler would either have to take to the sea, or traverse to the eastern slope to continue his southern route.  In the southernmost reaches, this land becomes almost impossible to traverse.  Here the land and sea become interspersed.  This is a land of islands, fjods and forests.  The rain and clouds and mist are near permanent.  Inland just a few miles, the mountainous spine becomes encased in permanent ice.  By the time the land gives way to the sea, the permanent snow-line is but a few hundred feet above sea level.

 I have not yet been to this place myself, but I will someday.  Lima, Peru is the closest I’ve been and it is a world away.

 

Welcome to The Dusty Globe!  Stay tuned for some great travels….