preparations

We're spending the day getting some loose ends tied up before we hit the road on Sunday... lookin' at good old Rand McNally and planning a route, talking about hotsprings, sharing our clothes like sisters, getting loads of cash from the bank because travelers' checks are for grandmas, hitting up AAA for camping guides, and packing important items up such as corkscrews, toilet paper, and a frying pan.

We're taking it easy since I'm still recovering from satan's illness, but I actually think I'm on the mend.

Plans for the next couple of days include a walk to the Mississippi Summer Sidewalk thingy. Also on the agenda, a visit with our old friend Josh, who was a neighbor of ours back in the undergraduate days at UVM, and who I ran into at First Thursday a couple of months ago. He's got a PhD now, and has grown up a lot since the days when he owned that divey basement bar in Burlington called The Last Chance. Aah, the Chance, site of bygone latenight drunken escapades that we would probably not want to remember, even if we could. Amanda flew in to PDX last night. Look how excited Miss Vesta was to see her autie, ears back in I-Love-you mode!
Our first leg of the journey, up Columbia Boulevard.

Packing up the camping box!

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.