I'm an unplanner. The ramifications of this sort of (non)methodology can sometimes be uncomfortable, and often I find myself in trouble, or late, or forgetting about something important, like taxes. With travel, though, my unplanning usually serves me well: with just a skeleton of a plan in place, I can let the rest of the journey flesh itself out sweetly, without effort or forcing. I take the ride, I don't make it.
Amanda and I seem to be on the same page about the skeleton of the first leg of the roadtrip: make it from Portland to the Bad Liver Valley in 7-12 days-ish. Take northern-ish roads, two-laners when we can, and hit a few sweet spots along the way: Corn Palace, Mt. Rushmore, Paul Bunyan and his ox, and whatever other goodnesses appear. Camp, mostly. Eat cheap and fresh and lean, plus chocolate. Hit divey bars for beers once in a while, and feed quarters to the jukebox. Laugh a lot.
Still, in the middle of all of this unplanning, I'm looking forward! Excited! Can almost taste the hot pavement ahead of me! I'm unplanning for fun, for freedom, for love, for my back upon the earth, for adventure, for the timelessness of travel without expectation.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
seed stages
The road is in my blood. When I was a little kid, my parents and I took off for a month every summer, crossing the States or Canada, camping, visiting old friends. In our powder blue Chevy pickup truck, with a homemade wooden cap on the back, we would pack up and head out of New Hampshire in search of adventure. Destinations weren't the point, the journey was.
Memory works in unknown ways, and the strongest images I hold from these trips range from the mundane (seeing a double feature of ET and Annie at a KOA campground in New Paltz, NY) to the dramatic (watching our tent get caught up by a storm someplace in Kansas, my father's wiry muscles bulging as he tried to hang on to it, watching him lose to the elements as the stakes pulled upward and out of the ground, watching him finally give up and let go, the tent twirling into the sky like Dorothy's house).
As I grew into adolescence, I brought stacks of teen novels on these journeys, Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew, and closed myself off from watching the land move past. But after my teenaged ennui had largely left me, I was once again drawn to the road.
As college graduation closed in, I found myself without a plan or direction, so I struck out on my own journey, all by myself, seeking to find every answer to every question I had about who I was, and what I should be doing. For several months, I crisscrossed my way about the United States, looking for THE PLACE TO BE, camping and hiking and eating power bars and powdered gatorade and kraft macaroni and cheese with canned tomatoes or tuna. I visited friends, stayed in youth hostels in cities, wrote in my journal, and wore the same shorts every day.
At Bryce Canyon, I was struck with a simple notion: this here is a planet we live on. And strangely, during this and other private moments along the way, I discovered a sense of home within myself. I ended up back where I'd started in Vermont, fancying myself tough and wise. Looking back, I feel affection toward my girl-self: bemusement at the way I took things so seriously back then, and also admiration at the guts I had to really, really go for it. When I was 21, I was too naive to realize that the world can be a dangerous place for a young woman alone, but my open trust turned out to be my greatest protector and ally. Knowing I would be okay made it so.
Since that time, I've done my share of pavement rolling, lived in three corners of the country. Now I find myself pretty settled in Portland, and on the brink of 30, and longing for a solid summer road trip. So... I'm doing it!
Dear old friends Chris and Emily are getting married in July back in Waitsfield at the dear old Millbrook, the perfect reason to pack out of town. Amanda, that lovely BFF of mine, is heading East with me, and Vesta's coming, too. We're psyched to explore the goods of Americana, and reacquaint ourselves with ourselves and each other and the land of our country, and make a pilgrimage back to the homeland, where summer smells better than anyplace else.
So, coming Mid-July: Trans-American Roadtrip Kitsch. Stay tuned.
Memory works in unknown ways, and the strongest images I hold from these trips range from the mundane (seeing a double feature of ET and Annie at a KOA campground in New Paltz, NY) to the dramatic (watching our tent get caught up by a storm someplace in Kansas, my father's wiry muscles bulging as he tried to hang on to it, watching him lose to the elements as the stakes pulled upward and out of the ground, watching him finally give up and let go, the tent twirling into the sky like Dorothy's house).
As I grew into adolescence, I brought stacks of teen novels on these journeys, Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew, and closed myself off from watching the land move past. But after my teenaged ennui had largely left me, I was once again drawn to the road.
As college graduation closed in, I found myself without a plan or direction, so I struck out on my own journey, all by myself, seeking to find every answer to every question I had about who I was, and what I should be doing. For several months, I crisscrossed my way about the United States, looking for THE PLACE TO BE, camping and hiking and eating power bars and powdered gatorade and kraft macaroni and cheese with canned tomatoes or tuna. I visited friends, stayed in youth hostels in cities, wrote in my journal, and wore the same shorts every day.
At Bryce Canyon, I was struck with a simple notion: this here is a planet we live on. And strangely, during this and other private moments along the way, I discovered a sense of home within myself. I ended up back where I'd started in Vermont, fancying myself tough and wise. Looking back, I feel affection toward my girl-self: bemusement at the way I took things so seriously back then, and also admiration at the guts I had to really, really go for it. When I was 21, I was too naive to realize that the world can be a dangerous place for a young woman alone, but my open trust turned out to be my greatest protector and ally. Knowing I would be okay made it so.
Since that time, I've done my share of pavement rolling, lived in three corners of the country. Now I find myself pretty settled in Portland, and on the brink of 30, and longing for a solid summer road trip. So... I'm doing it!
Dear old friends Chris and Emily are getting married in July back in Waitsfield at the dear old Millbrook, the perfect reason to pack out of town. Amanda, that lovely BFF of mine, is heading East with me, and Vesta's coming, too. We're psyched to explore the goods of Americana, and reacquaint ourselves with ourselves and each other and the land of our country, and make a pilgrimage back to the homeland, where summer smells better than anyplace else.
So, coming Mid-July: Trans-American Roadtrip Kitsch. Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)