Westward Expansion

On the other end of a divestment period (e.g., yard sales and donations to Salvation Army) we can compact the goods of two lives into a 17’ UHAUL and a 98 Outback until there’s no space or initiative for the little bits. A few rolls of toilet paper, bottle of cleaner, doormat, hand soap, and other sundry items will be left behind for the next person who will sit on my toilet, soak in my tub, shuffle across the shaggy carpet to open the blinds and take in the enviable view.

We contract to move West, to fit into the vehicles and smaller living quarters of a pricy mountain town. Yet we expand as we exit onto interstates south and west like a waistline unfettered by a loosened belt after a holiday dinner. We spread into the space between even when we’re about to become a Hummer Sandwich in Hot Lanta or caught up in a stampede of freighters crossing the Mississippi.

We have someplace to be, someplace we want to be and then there’s someplace we’ve been, that took us to places we no longer wish to go and for a few days we have no other obligation than to get there, no other distractions. We’re surrounded by our dishes and clothes and have none to wash. We get to float through these in-between places. I get to wonder about the owner of the dog that’s munching trash outside a North Mississippi gas station and admire the patrons who have enough company and conversation to overlook the hole in the restroom door and generally shabby surroundings. I’m not sure whether I’m more startled by the trash eating dog, the view of the man on the toilet, or the white clad, very pregnant bleached blond teen waddling from her cammo truck to the register through a sea of elderly black men mounted in ATV’s beside the entrance.

Who lives between stands of even aged pine in the hills of Alabama and Mississippi? Why are there so few signs and unpaved shoulders? Mississippi doesn’t “Feel like going home” and I feel disoriented in the humid spaces cut with familiar brown waters cluttered with cypress and tupelo and vines until I’m sitting beside the river over a late lunch in Little Rock.

Tucked into our generically comfortable beds at the Hampton Inn Oklahoma City, Oklahoma we were OK. More than westward migrants of earlier decades without the continuity of cell phone, wireless internet, and plastic to forecast and buffer against unanticipated eventualities.

The welcoming green field under blue sky of Oklahoma feels safe, then celebratory with a flagrant sunset over a rare water body. This celestial display likely had something to do with the storm system sprawling across the north-central portion of the state. The relaxed sensation of driving across open country morphed rapidly into anxiety induced by too much information. The wall of cloud stretching floor to ceiling tossed rods of lightning and tornadoes as it charged eastward. How could the air waves bounce with Alan Jackson’s sweet crooning and a car dealer intone a massive sale while the sky was unloading?

An apocalyptic religious radio station fittingly offered extensive coverage of weather events as they unfolded. Like school children gazing on a driveway overflowing with snow, we knew we were home free for the day; we just wanted to hear the confirmation by a newscaster. The storm was tracking northeast of us. We were close enough to marvel at the light show, didn’t have to dodge golf ball hail, or be doused with the stream of water rinsing a parallel highway, or worse, experience the spin cycle of a tornado. The storm trackers provided lively commentary peppered with terms familiar to those versed in the taking of shelter.

What would it be like to live in tornado alley? To have to abide by the sky so frequently? You couldn’t cycle a few more miles or play a few more holes as though the storm would pass with the only likely consequence a good soaking. At least there’s warnings and shelter. People died in the storm system we saw. Homes were devastated and waves of tornado induced destruction slipped across the country as those first few days turned into weeks of May.

The earlier version of us, average easterners, betting on better prospects in the West didn’t have the soothing announcer to tell them what to expect on the road ahead. Didn’t know where they’d sleep or if the rations would last. What did they do in the heavy storms? What would we have done? Try to outrun nature’s advances by taking an alternate route? Found a shelter at a highway exit?

Windmills churned through powdery sky and anchored the parched grasses of North Texas. A few tumbleweeds got away and careened across the interstate. A welcome dull, a sufficient preparation for enchanting New Mexico. Mesas and scrub, mountains and arroyos. There’s beauty everywhere and in everything but it feels easier to sink into here.

Gas has spiked for no good reason and yet every and anything could and should be linked and related to the inevitable debt for our quality of life. Better prospects might yet exist for some in the basins and ranges of the Rockies but I can’t help but wonder how long we’ll continue heading there. How many will be able to afford to, how much longer we’ll have the famed free thinking, high quality places where you can find your way and still get lost in rocks and trees.

Gas prices hit an all time high the week we headed West, a record since broken in a race without end. We hole up between buttes, beneath scrubby hills where rocks fall and just beyond lies a forested river flowing from pointy, snowy peaks. Record snows mean high flows. We traipse across snowfields and lakes still frozen in late May grasping, appreciating our lofty, yet uncertain prospect.