Road Journal .57(VT, NH, ME)

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

End of the Nation

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. –Louis L’Amour

Bethel, Maine

Chris gripped a calloused palm around the point of the boulder, hoisting himself atop it. I copied his movements and followed his path up the rock face. With a cool wind pushing the sweat from our shirtless bodies, we stood at the top of Tumbledown Mountain.

“I told you it was beautiful up here,” he said.

I’d met Chris a day earlier at my show in Lewiston. He was twenty-nine years old, had once been a homeowner engaged to be married, and in a few months would be leaving on an 11,000 mile walk across the perimeter of the United States. When he offered to lead me around his home state I followed.

Twin birds flew over the mountain peak and seemed to be eying us. I followed their path and found myself looking west at the great bulge of America that roared endlessly in valley, mountain, and desert into the Pacific Ocean. Turning around there was just the green wilderness of Maine perched upon cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. I’d seen it all. There was nowhere else to go.

The only thing left to do was to find a pier on the Atlantic coast, ride the motorcycle over the dilapidated boards and listen to the engine roar as I soared through the air for one shining moment and then…splash! The bike would be swallowed by the blue salt water and as it sank to its sandy grave I would swim as fast and as far as I could—maybe miles into the eastern sea—until my arms burned with fatigue and my shallow breaths filled with water. I would sink, exhaustedly and acceptingly, allowing the earth to take me, to drag me to the ocean floor where my body, like the bike, would biodegrade. The salt water would erode the motorcycle’s rusty chrome. The fish would feast on my decaying flesh until my body was no more than bones. Over the course of a century my skeleton would crumble, the bike would decay in half-lives and we’d mix with the ocean water until finally, finally the particles of my soul and the remaining molecules of the motorcycle would be lifted in rough seas and, on a riptide breaker, ejected from the ocean to blow in a stormy breeze back across the American soil.

The birds circled back around, landing on a rock near Chris’s feet.

“America was once all wilderness,” he said. “People like us go exploring it. There’s a bit of the frontiersman left in us all.”

I’d met throngs of travelers throughout my odyssey. Was it just destiny to meet so many like myself? Or is the primal urge to move and to seek so buried within the national spirit that it overtakes every American, regardless of race and gender? We are a nation founded by travelers. Over the final week of my trek I met handfuls of them.

Brattleboro, Vermont

A blonde boy with a crew cut screamed as he was spit from the waterslide, plunking into the cold pool with a splash. A black girl in a blue one-piece cannon-balled off the diving board. A brunette on the lifeguard stand tweeted her whistle. A mother lifted her toddler from the baby pool. On the deck, two nine-year old boys sucked on ice cream cones.

I swam to the ladder and lifted myself from the water, its beads dripping from my shorts as I walked barefoot onto the hot black pavement of the Vermont parking lot. Between two pickup trucks, my handlebars reflected the blinding rays of the sun. Pulling my helmet from the right handgrip I found a note inside, written on the back of a business card.

“I too am a renegade traveler,” it read. “Call me for a place to crash.”

On the business side of the card were only the printed initials “T.B.” above the title “Adventurer” and a phone number.

I imagined T.B. waiting by a phone somewhere, knowing that a person like me was victim to curiosity and unable to turn down any mysterious invitation.

Moments later I was on the phone, scribbling his directions for our rendezvous.

T.B. was a twenty-four year old photographer with a degree from the University of Connecticut. He was 6’2” with a strong build not unlike my own and a commanding presence of self-confidence. He’d hitchhiked around the southwest a few times and up to Alaska once. He was planning a big trip somewhere and in the meantime was living in an old cabin, funding himself by building a barn on a nearby farm.

He shook my bunk bed to wake me in the morning and drove us to the farm where he got me hired for a day’s work walling the barn’s second story.

I left with an extra hundred and forty dollars in my pocket, enough to continue east for my final two states and my final five days.

Concord, New Hampshire

She waved from the window of her Jeep, signaling me to the shoulder on the New Hampshire road.

Stepping from her driver’s seat, the gorgeous brunette shimmered like gold in the sun. The energy radiated from her as she approached, ever hotter with every step in the sweaty afternoon.

“Are you camping?” She asked, pointing at the sleeping bag strapped to my bike.

The words fluttered off her tongue, light gleamed from her eyes. She was in love. Not with me, but with what I represented: freedom.

I didn’t have to say a word—didn’t have to mention the forty-eight or the many months on the road or all the cut ties. She knew.

“Take me with you,” her eyes begged. “I want so badly to go everywhere,” she said.

She told me she was a college student at the University of New Hampshire. She wanted to travel for no other reason than to do it. She had vague plans that she feared would never be realized.

She was one among the many I’d already met. The college girls, the married women, the businessmen, the construction workers, the retired couples…everyone wanting to leave any Here, no matter how nice, to travel to any There.

Sometimes people told me directly. Sometimes they told me with their eyes. It was the same wonder, the same spirit. The same flame I could spark in glances at children as I passed their parents’ cars on the highway, raising my hand in a wave as the kids smashed their faces adoringly against the glass.

Freedom has a strange affect on people. Some fear it and angrily defend the bars of their prison. Some run to it with open arms. Others spot it on the highway, flag it down and embrace it without question.

The brunette spun her hair on her finger, biting her lower lip as she awed over my machine. Sometimes these people just wanted to talk. Sometimes they just wanted to take me to dinner. Sometimes they just wanted to buy me a drink. Sometimes they just wanted to take me home.

Lubec, Maine

The rocky beach was empty—no sun burnt faces tanning on the shore, no children playing in the sand. No seagulls squawked overhead. No insects chirped in the bushes. There was nothing but the collision of waves against the continent.

America was over. I was out of real estate. There was nothing more, not even a dock to drive off.

A whole nation was behind me. A place where children cry against the mold stained walls of New Orleans shelters. A place where Spanish speaking laborers arrive at night school to learn English after fifteen hour workdays. A place where one man fears he’ll lose his lifestyle to another. A place where men choose to hate one-another based on that fear.

Where bodies sit before televisions. Where national emergencies are one broadcast away. Where people raise arms above heads and cheer when their team scores a goal.

A place where a poor child believes he’ll become a millionaire. A place where old men are evicted while awaiting public assistance checks. A place where optimistic entrepreneurs launch businesses on the slightest of hopes.

A nation of inequality, where the wealthy few double and triple their chances, shouting with a louder microphone and buying more airtime.

A nation scared to death of terrorism.

A nation where racism has been cured topically and wiped clean from the skin, only to leave an infection deep in the belly. A nation where everyone, regardless of race, bears the cross of slavery.

But a nation where everyone has a chance—just some more than others.

A nation of hope.

A land of opportunity.

Where would I go? What would I do? It didn’t matter, just as long as I kept evolving and kept writing.

I was, after all, exactly what I’d set out to be. I ‘d wallowed through the depths of the nation, struggled in personal poverty, sweated out four AM shifts in a New York City kitchen, and stayed in slum motels with drug dealers and prostitutes. I’d stayed with the wealthy, with the young, and with the old. I’d been the victim of crime and I’d been treated as a criminal. But throughout my journey I had been writing a book of short stories, a novel, and a travelogue. I was an author. And I had books to promote.

I was a storyteller and had an audience to reach. The wave of my following had been mounting and now I had a 300 seat venue for my performance in the nation’s capitol. Washington, DC was six weeks away.

I was an expeditionary with a whole world of adventure ahead of me.

Just as I had when I embarked on this journey, 396 days ago, I could hear destiny calling.

Once again, it was time to answer.