Pat and I recently drove to Sarasota, FL for a concert, stopping on the way at Roswell, GA for an Irish session, and at St. Simon Island to visit a friend. In Sarasota we both came down with a cold/flu and headed prematurely for home, where we spent the next two weeks as runny-nosed, coughing couch potatoes. During this time we rented Ken Burns’ documentary The West on Netflix, fifteen hours of the grim history of the wresting of our country from Native Americans. I heard again the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that justified the whole mess; hadn’t thought of it since sixth grade history class. At that time, as a kid raised on TV cowboys (good) and Indians (bad, except for Tonto), I just assumed that all had been for the best, and now I was living in hunky dory Eisenhower land, thanks to the valiance of my forebears.
Now my road trip memories are etched in some kind of tableau right next to the images of wagon trains snaking across the land; travel-lusting Americans, side by side, from places all over the country, sharing a common dream of the future. Are we any different, we selfish, restless people, today? We are a strange tribe, driven by collective ambitions while demanding our right to act as individuals.
I felt the obnoxiousness of our American tribe on I 95 as I encountered folks at rest stops, in hotel hallways, waiting in line for coffee and fries at McDonald’s, or zipping by me on the road in sturdy cars with bikes strapped to the roof (it was the beginning of Easter vacation.) Aspects of communal facilities troubled me, like for instance the women who leave toilets damp (which one sometimes only discovers after sitting down.) Or the fact that some magnetic force attracts me to the only stall in a row with the latch broken (again, only discovered once I sit down, having arrived at the 11th hour of my need) so I have to keep the door closed with one foot, while some fussy and vocal toddler impatiently rocks against it. Where is the child’s mother? She is talking on her cell phone while washing her hands at the other end of the room. Was this the etiquette observed at freshly dug latrines on the trail? I wonder, and some not-so-nice images appear.
Feverish and swollen faced, Pat and I faced traffic jam after jam as we inched along I 95. Troubling things happen among the tribe during these events. One or two or three renegades decide that the waiting does not apply to them, and run past the line of cars on the left hand margin, with an attitude like, “watch me, suckers.” Then, when the driver discovers that he really does have to merge, he depends on the kindness of his fellows to let him again into the ranks. I really wonder about this psycho-social behavior. Is this the same me-ism that caused settlers to ride roughshod over others to stake their claim on homestead acreage, on gold mining sites? Competition is the backbone of our tribe. Sometimes it feels like it is actually a pastime in itself, even when the prize is ambiguous, or meaningless.
Worst of all were the trucks. I guess truck drivers are a sort of sub-group of our tribe, with different rules. Like, you get to bully anyone smaller than you if they are slowing you down in any way. You get to drive faster than anybody else. Why is this? Because you are busy delivering the Stuff. These are the kings of consumerism, the lords of the highway. Not only do they blast you with their horn to get out of the way, they continue with the blast while and after passing – a steady stream to match the F and GD and SOBs the driver is probably muttering under his breath. I understand that these guys drink like Red Bull to keep them alert. How weird is that, Red Bull? The Lakota must be laughing up their sleeves at that choice of name.
So now I sit quietly in my mountain home, in a territory once peopled by the Cherokee but now claimed by white Christians who worship a prophet born two thousand years ago in the Middle East, who was dark skinned and wore sandals. I don’t understand this mongrel tribe to whom I belong. Or maybe I do, but don’t want to admit it. I walk in the woods and by the streams and wonder whether the spirits there can ever welcome me; I know myself as a member of the fair skinned people who bribe and promise and lie, who come on with the tractors and the asphalt, claiming a better life for all. The past is still alive.
On the ancient Celtic calendar, tonight is Samhain, when the living and dead join hands and tango. It is the eve of a New Year; the tropical summer with its searing heat is behind us and the introspective, crystalline winter is ahead. It seems I have come round again on the calendar, to a place just above that spiraling DNA of inner growth where I can look down from my perch and see clear through to one year ago, when jubilation over a completed CD veered, all at once, into the territory of grief and loss. No matter how it strikes, I can never dodge the process of grief. It is a flood. It must have its way.
