AncienTrails

Travel Resistance

Beltane                   Waxing Dyan Moon

Metropolitan Lounge, Chicago Union Station

Leg two finished.  Now I have some time in Chicago, but not as much as I had yesterday in DC.

Each time I’ve traveled over the last 3 or 4 years I’ve wondered if it was worth it.  There seems to come a point near the end of each trip when I find the hassle of travel outweighing the benefits.  In part that comes from those times when I travel alone and Kate is not there to share the fun.  In part it comes from my increasing attachment to our land, our home.  There is also an element of aging, stamina is a challenge sometimes.

I don’t know what to make of this because traveling has been an important, even integral part of my life since I was a young boy–when I often traveled alone.

Joseph continues a quick recovery from his appendectomy.  A young body, kept in good physical condition goes a long way in healing and that describes him.  His Major visited him in the hospital and called Kate to let her know everything was ok.  That made Joseph feel good and gave me a sense that he is in good hands in the Air Force.

The temperature is 53, much more like it for this northern boy.  The high today will be 65.

The Last Steam Engine

Beltane Waxing Dyan Moon

South Bend, Indiana Room 5, car 2901 at the junction of Eastern and Central Time

Outside the train with his family is a young boy I encountered about 4:00 a.m. with his head down in the toilet. He looks better now, smiling and happy to be on friendly ground.

The train carried me through western Pennsylvania and northern Ohio, brushing Lake Erie, as I slept. The sound of a train’s horn becomes a machine age lullaby, the slight rocking of the train a metal nanny rocking you to sleep. I realized on the way down that this has an older association for me. Our home on Canal Street in Alexandria, Indiana sat only a couple of blocks from the Nickel Plate Railroad’s tracks. Each night at midnight the nation’s lasting functioning steam engine came through town and sounded its horn where the tracks crossed nearby Monroe Street.

It feels good to be headed north where 70 is a more normal high during the day, not at night. The heat and traveling alone began to wear on me on the last day in Savannah. I chose a refueling option with the rental car that made it optimal to bring the car back empty. Near the time I decided to go the airport to drop off the car I began looking for a seafood place for a last lunch. None appeared. Even with the air conditioning on the heat beat against the car. Wanting to shed the responsibility I drove to the airport and by the time I got there I was hot, hungry and bit nervous about my nearly empty gas tank.

In part this was a reflection of my desire to be quit of this place and, like the young boy, to be back on friendly ground. Back now in the Midwest, riding through Indiana on the way to Chicago, I have gotten there. The train makes travel simple, so I can focus on enjoying the ride.

Cumberland Gap

Beltane Waxing Dyan Moon May 30^th, toward evening

Capitol Limited, traveling through the Cumberland Gap

We passed Cumberland, West Virgina 15 minutes ago. The train stopped near the Union Rescue Mission. Nearby a man with a sleeveless t-shirt, a gut and a gray beard shrugged. Beside him a four year old boy with no shirt mimicked his shrug. Exactly.

The Cumberland Gap is a true piece of Americana, the first straightforward path through the Appalachia’s. Until its discovery the west was difficult to reach for all but the most determined. We went through a long stretch of no phone service, maybe 100 miles in western Maryland.

At supper I met a guy who works for the Bosch company. He says the company has a charitable foundation. No big news there. If it works the way he said it does, though, the reality amazes. He says each year the foundation divides up the profits. The company is wholly owned by the Bosch family. They get 2-3% of the profit. The board which helps them manage gets the same. The rest, 94% or so each year, goes to the foundation for charitable work. Last year the profit was $67,000,000,000. That’s one hell of a lot of money. Or, at least it was before the bank bail-outs.

A weird thing on the way to the metro to the Smithsonian. I saw a guy that looked a lot like my Dad. He a Red Skins hat on and a Hawai’ian style shirt, but he had the Spitler nose and Dad’s distinctive cheek bones and squarish face. He looked enough like him to make me look twice.

I forgot about him. Then,while I ate lunch at the Smithsonian Castle Cafe, he came through the hallway beside the table where I sat. This second encounter caused my imagination to leap into high gear. What if it was Dad? Why now? What would we say to each other?

There was a moment where I pushed myself all the way into that scenario. I allowed myself to imagine actually encountering my Dad father, after all these years. What would our conversation have been like? A frisson of fear shot through me. Dead Dad, after all. I realized the conversation we’d had would have been much like the one’s in life. Interesting, but somehow disengaged, distant.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I would have asked a question or two about the afterlife.

The train just went around a curve, still here in the Cumberland Gap. I could see our engines and the other cars ahead of us. The sleeping cars come last in the train. I imagine that cuts down on traffic in the hallways.

I’ll sign off now as the sun sinks down below the Appalachian mount just ahead of us.

Savannah Train Station

Beltane         Waxing Dyan Moon

Savannah Amtrak Station, waiting on the Silver Meteor which the stationmaster said will be 20 minutes late.

After leaving the rental car to the tender mercies of the Alamo cleaners, I took a taxi from the airport to the Amtrak station. In the process I rode on early 20^th century technology to get to 19^th century technology, displaced by the mid 20^th century phenomenon of the commercial jet.

When I first arrived at 6:00 p.m., I had the station all to myself. The stationmaster asked how far I wanted to check “this big boy.” All the way to Minneapolis.

He gave me a new ticket folder because the trip down had crumpled the old one.

The first additional travelers to arrive were a short, squat man with brill cream slicked back hair, an Asian boy in sandals whom he treated as a son and two short pinch fenced red heads headed back to some school or the other. They were family and had, apparently long ago, mastered the art of conversations in which each of them talked at the same time. It was a peculiar experience. Like watching unfamiliar animals in their habitat.

Now there are many people in the station, that movement of people in and out of public places that finds them alternately empty and crowded, as tides of passengers or audiences or students come and go. The change is from dead to alive, a space with no buzz to a space filled with the agendas of strangers mixed together for a brief period.

It may be the relative novelty of train travel, but all this seems more human, certainly less desparate than the airport, even the small one I left earlier today.

Now there are two Amtrak employees here.

Every one stays in their small spaces, talking to those whom they know. One thing travelers do is find small spaces they can claim as their own. This space, no matter if its only a plastic seat in a crowded room, provides a refuge from the chaos of others and their unknown purposes. This is one of the chief advantages of train travel, it allows a space with real boundaries, a place you can fall asleep while traveling.

Yes, it takes longer, but the process has a definite scale to it that seems to match me. Rather than flung in the air by great jet engines, we will glide over the rails, pulled forward by hulking engines with humans at the controls, in fact riding on the engine itself.

Memory

Beltane          Waxing Dyan Moon

Acela Lounge,  Washington, D.C.

Leg two of the trip begins in about two hours, the Capitol Limited to Chicago.  This is, again, a sleeper.  The first few hours in daylight will take us through Maryland, West Virginia and into Pennsylvania.  As night comes, we’ll travel through western Pennsylvania and Ohio, reaching Chicago at 8:40 a.m. on Sunday, June 1st.

This morning I saw the Phillips collection again.  It’s strange the way memory shapes expectations.  Two falls ago I went to New York and revisited the Cloisters, once one of my favorite places.  This time it seemed smaller, less magical.  Why?  I can’t say.

The Phillips collection was the same.  Though there were a couple of Bonnards and Cezannes that drew me in, the Morris Louis paintings, especially his blue column and the Rothko room, the rest left me flat.

The D.C. metro though was as good as I recalled.  It’s clean, easy to use and reasonably priced.

I took it to the Freer where the piece that jumped out at me was Whistler’s Peacock Room.  So overdone, but at the same so cohesive and beautiful.

A meal at the Smithsonian Castle Cafe and I headed back to the station.  It’s the afternoon.  Hot.  I remembered.  Besides it’s also the time when I take a nap.  Which I plan to do right now.

The End of Masonry Forts

Beltane              Waxing Dyan Moon

Savannah Hilton Head Island International Airport

The rental car has returned to its stable, now a “dirty car” in the lingo of the rental car world.  The KIA was ok, but seemed a bit tinny to me.  Might have just been the crank windows, separately locked doors and no cruise control.

Ft. Pulawski on Cockspur Island covered the north and south shipping lanes into Savannah for the new American government, part of the Third build-out of forts to protect the east and gulf coast.

It fell into Confederate hands when the state of Georgia took it with state militia prior to its secession.

The role of Ft. Pulawski in military history is an odd one.  On April 10th, 1862 Union soldiers began a bombardment.  It used the usual smooth bore cannons and mortars largely to no affect.  There were however a few Parrot rifled cannons.  After a day of bombardment the Parrots broke down the seven foot thick masonry walls (bricks) and the next day projectiles began to strike near the powder magazine.  The Fort surrendered.

This spelled the end of masonry forts in military history.

A High Pain Threshold

Beltane            Waxing Dyan Moon

Savannah, Georgia          Historic District

Travel lesson now learned many times:  In hot places go out early and late, not in the midday.  Not sure why this takes so long to return as a lesson because I first learned it in Bogota many years ago.  That four week trip through Southeast Asia taught it to me daily.  I’m a northerner through and through.

Joseph called this morning from the hospital.  He said the doctor told him he should have been in a lot of pain.  “I think I must have a high pain threshold.” You think?  This from the kid who helped the ski patrol set his broken femur.

Glad he didn’t get my pain threshold.  He considers it a good hospitalization because he hasn’t had a catheter.  I agree.

Four southern plants with great names:  resurrection fern, live oak, blaspheme vine and hurrah bush.

8:05 p.m. I board the Silver Meteor for Washington, D.C.  Homeward bound.

Savannah Nights

Beltane            Waxing Dyan Moon

Holiday Inn Express,  Savannah, Georgia    Historic District

Joseph’s out of surgery and doing fine.  His surgeon called me while I ate supper at Vic’s.  “We went in through his belly button and two small holes in his groin.  The appendix was inflamed, but he’s doing fine. He’ll be out tomorrow.”

Whew.  He’s a tough kid, but I wish he wouldn’t get a chance to prove it quite so often.

The evenings here sing.  A breeze blows up the Savannah River from the Atlantic.  A crescent moon hangs over the cable suspension breeze west of the River District.  People congregate along the cobblestone street and the brick lined walkway where excursion boats and the Coast Guard cutter, Tarpon, dock.

River Sweets offers free praline samples as you walk in the door.  It’s hard to walk out without something.  I have white chocolate covered peanuts in a nice box.  Dessert.

As the sun goes down, Savannah began to seduce me.  Imagining nights strolling with Kate along the river walk, eating at cafe’s in the historic district beneath Spanish moss draped live oaks.  Then I shook myself and imagined afternoons baking the sun, hotter even in the next few months than what I found today.  Hmmm.  No thanks.

We live where the music and genius of a place speaks to the home place of our soul.  Like the tulip and the daffodil, I require a cold winter to flourish.  Like them, I would rot in the heat.

Savannah Redux

Beltane    Waxing Dyan Moon

Holiday Inn Express Savannah, Georgia Historic District

This is the last lodging for this trip that does not move.

On the way here from Folkston I listened to a “classical” country music station, Legends of Country Music, out of Jacksonville, Florida. Seemed to fit the scenery as I drove through Jesup, Ludowic and Nathuna.

Breakfast at a Waffle King, a Waffle House knockoff. Not bad.

After lunch, I’m going to explore the historic district on foot, specifically looking for the Maritime museum and a bookstore I saw during the Grayline tour a week ago.

Local color. Outside Nathuna there was a sign board, the kind where you use plastic letters to display your message. It stood in a pasture. On it was: Clinging to Guns and Religion. Behind this stirring message was a tall flag pole from which hung the stars and bars.

Though southerners like Chip underscore the New South, plenty of the old south persists: pickup trucks, sad songs, a sense of resolution in defeat, yet still a pall of defeatedness, fried food, confederate flags and slump shouldered young men of impressive heft. Not at all that different from parts of Anoka County.

Later in the afternoon, Holiday Express

While out walking through Savannah’s historic district, Joseph called. “I have some bad news.” The kind of thing that makes a parent’s heart sink. “I have appendicitis.” He couldn’t sleep last night,woke up with some pain and visited a doctor on base. Now he’s on his way to the Emergency Room for an appendectomy. Wish I could have been there for him.

This is not such a serious matter anymore with surgery often done laproscopically through the navel. Still, each time you encounter the health care system you have to be concerned for your health. I know it’s a paradox, but there you are.

When he calls to report a good outcome, I’ll feel better.

Fried Foods. Enough.

Beltane         Waxing Dyan Moon

Folkston, Georgia           Gateway to the Okefenokee

The Okefenokee Restaurant is the place to eat in Folkston.  It has a country buffet.  When I looked at the fried entrees, I asked for a menu. It said, “We encourage you to try the buffet.”  This after a short menu of fried food.

There was however enough fruit and vegetables to satisfy me when I reinspected the buffet.  Hah.  After a week plus in the south, the sight of fried food has begun to have an aversive affect on me.

This is the area of Georgia known as the piney woods, the growth on the sandy soil here that is not swamp.  Some of it is the remains of an ancient barrier island, Trail Ridge, which forms the eastern boundary of the Okefenokee.  In the day of the barrier island the Okefenokee was a salt marsh protected from the Atlantic by the island.