May 7, Friday, D-day minus six.
At this stage of life, I hope to have done something worthwhile, become (somewhat) interesting, created something marvellous, been somewhere otherworldly, raised Cain sometimes, loved someone well, and gained a bit of wisdom, somehow. But I have never done what I am about to do.
I sometimes wear a ring that has a verse from Goethe inscribed on it:
Keep not standing
fixed and rooted:
briskly wander
briskly roam.
That's as good an answer as any for this undertaking: a solo drive from Philadelphia, PA to Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA on the Monterey Peninsula and back by way of the Pacific Northwest. The routes -- Southern, out-bound and Northern, in-bound -- will cover 8000+ miles and take approximately thirty-six days.
Although the decision was only made a week ago, both the itinerary and the car - "Baby", as Julia, my daughter calls it, since she says it has replaced her (hardly!) in my affections, is a 1999 Silver Porsche Boxster -- should be ready tomorrow. Other preparations, principally the mental/emotional ones, are not quite as far along. However, just like when I made my first (and only) sky-dive, it's better not to have too much time between deciding and doing: to quote T.S. Eliot, "In a minute there is time, for decisions and revisions, which a minute will reverse".
Getting "Baby" ready -- all sports cars and ships are "female" by convention, so please no accusations of sexism, at least not over that!-- was not cheap: it seemed like the answer to every question at the dealer's service department was "About a thousand dollars", as in: "How much for a new set of tires?" "Oh, about a thousand dollars...." "And the 30,000 major maintenance?" "About a thousand dollars...." "What about upgrading the headlights to the Litronics?" "That's about a thousand dollars." "And if I want a GPS system?" "Also about a thousand dollars.".......The upshot is that if I am lost and pulled over in Mississipi by a Sheriff at 2 am, I will be hand-cuffed by the light of regular headlights. But the tires will be new and the car will start with no problems.
As friends will attest, I have never been car-crazy and getting a Porsche, even a pre-owned one, was out-of-character for someone who has never needed a car in the city. However, my attraction to Baby is visceral and, thus, inexplicable, as are all great loves. (If life is like a road and a car is like a woman, the perfect partner in both categories is one that can both get you into trouble...and get you out of it. I've got the car....)
Getting the itinerary set has meant a series of trade-offs while allowing room for the unexpected. Considering the constraints, which include getting to Carmel by May 27th to attend a wedding where I have a speaking part (more on that later) and needing to find another income-stream since my last one ended a week ago (maybe more on that as well), I still will be checking off more than a dozen places in the "1000 Places To See Before You Die" book that Julia gave last year. (It will bring my personal total to over 130.)
While national parks and monuments, historical/folkloric sites, and great scenery dominate my route and stops, the highlight is highly personal. It's Robinson's Gulch and Deep Creek, a remote place in the Hell's Canyon section of the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho. Sometime around May 27, 1887, as many as 41 Chinese miners were tortured, massacred, and their bodies mutilated by a group of horse-thieves with robbery as the motive. The remains were left to rot, with some locals behaving well (a few bodies were buried in Lewiston), while others behaved despicably (one skull was converted into a sugar bowl used in an area ranch). It was the largest killing of Chinese in this country. I read about it when, a few years ago, the transcripts of the grand-jury investigation were found hidden in the back of the safe of Walla Walla County's historical society. I became interested in writing about these men driven by famine in China to leave family and home to pan for the last gold grains in played-out claims, only to die horribly and anonymously, their bodies desecrated, their fate unknown to loved ones. June 7, the day the tour boat from Lewiston drops me off there for a few hours, is close enough to the anniversary date to experience the site in the season of their deaths. Spring in America brought an end, not a new beginning to their lives. I want my piece/poem to memorialize that fact.
Well, I still have map print-outs and packing to do. I will be making regular entries here, possibly nightly, and post photos if I figure out how -- this is my first web-log. Email me comments, if you'd like, at harrison@mytao.com
