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Monday, August 25, 2008

Reentry

We are in the badlands in the southwestern corner of North Dakota. The land called Makoshika (bad spirits) by the Lakota, and in French, les mauvaises terres a traverse (bad land to cross). But not so bad nowadays being that I94 slices through the southern tip of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (locus for the most striking vistas) and historic cow town Medora is nestled there with ice cream parlors, the Iron Horse Saloon, and gift shops galore, some more appropriate for Williamsburg than a town built around a slaughterhouse. This is not the Dells. The town is truly historic and the local foundation does a good job of preserving and highlighting its past with a minimum of kitsch. The Medora Musical, set in the Burning Hills Gulch just over a hill from the town, may strike some as a little over the top with frontier spirit, but it is done well and fun for the family. A new addition, the Cowboy Hall of Fame, does a lot well in a modest space, using multimedia and a comprehensive take on the people and processes than shaped the western range (including substantial coverage of Native American culture).



For me this—meaning the badlands of the national park—is a sanctuary space, a place to reconnect with a very long line of creation, and to re-create. Having been to somewhere north of 50 national parks and monuments, this remains my favorite. Not the most spectacular in vistas and inclines, not the most enriching in historical and cultural exhibits, and certainly not the largest since the southern unit where I wander is about the size of the city of Chicago. But in freedom of access, striking topography, concentration of wildlife, and harmony of light and form (photographically speaking), this park stands apart.


Imagine a rumpled bed sheet and you have an idea of this eccentric land, creased and furrowed into haystack hillocks, knife-edged ridges, and capstone buttes and outcroppings. This park measures something like 20 miles by 10 miles and within that space you can encounter bison, elk, mule deer, whitetail deer, coyotes, badgers, pronghorns, wild turkeys, and loads of prairie dogs. So a lot to offer, depending on what you are looking for.



We are now closing on 4,000 miles and four weeks of travel, and out of that we have spent 12 days in the cab of a Ford F250 pickup, with a 28-foot fifth wheel trailer attached, rolling through the northern plains prairie, Rockies and Cascades, the Puget Sound, the orchard lands and vineyards of eastern Washington, and the rangeland of western Dakotas.


We have acclimated ourselves to the road and the anticipation that tomorrow or the next day delivers a different perspective. Our trip has been about reconnection (friends and family in Omak, Seattle and Bozeman), prayer and parting (my wife’s mother in hospice in Walla Walla), and chemotherapy for our dog Suki at vet clinics in Montana, North Dakota, and Seattle (we may have a guide book out soon). Two adults, a college student and two white dogs adapting to the quirks of trailer life, and a shifting panorama, and each other’s moods and tastes (the college student has cut back on the Cheez-Its, and is now overdosing on anime clips using the campground wifi service).

Last photo was last night of the Little Missouri River. And the end of the road tomorrow. We have a few rocks for the garden, a case of Walla Walla wine, and hundreds of pics, but the really precious acquisition is the shared experience. Even at $4.21 a gallon (Washington) it was worth every mile.


Friday, August 22, 2008

Travel as a state of being


Three weeks now on the road and somewhere over 3,000 miles of asphalt, concrete and gravel under our tires. I’m beginning to sense how long-haul truckers feel on the return leg of a cross-country haul. It can be a chore, and some days almost an incarceration—I’m thinking of Will Turner’s dad on the Flying Dutchman (Pirates of the Caribbean). And some days a meditation. Tracking along the highway, passing by and passing through different land forms, weather patterns, communities, at once apart and part of a place and its consciousness, be it only momentary, we adapt to the rhythm of shifting vistas and viewpoints. Travel becomes a state of being.


Photos lately have been monochrome as I think that best gets at the essence of Montana. There is the whimsical (the expresso stand in the previous post), but also much integrity in the architecture of the range. I am noticing it more on this excursion than when we lived here two decades ago.




Heading east out of Paradise Valley yesterday (we had camped, fittingly, in Emigrant), we traveled along the Yellowstone River, past the same points of interest we had noted 18 days ago, through Billings and then northeast toward Glendive.

At the rest stop outside Custer I encountered this example of a welcoming ministry. And it really illustrates what good signage does for visitors: prominent placement (on the sidewalk leading to the restrooms); clear and concise with no hidden code; conveys vital information for a newcomer; and is up to date (there really are rattlesnakes in the sagebrush).


Out of Mile City we hit heavy rain and wind, or it hit us. Gusts to 60 mph from the west and torrents powerwashing our truck and trailer. So a slow go to Medora, North Dakota where we endured a lightening show and marble size hail (fortunately after parking and unhitching). So back on the plains. No more 7 percent grades, or falling rock signs. Three days here to recollect and reassess our experience as we explore the Badlands. Then due east.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Montana crossings



A week in Montana now with an overnight in St. Regis and a drive up the Flathead Valley and back through the Rockies to St. Mary's Lake on the east side of Glacier National Park. Along the way I photographed one of the ubiquitous expresso stands that seem to anchor every junction in this state, not what you might expect in this harddrinking and harddriving state (until a few years ago there was no speedlimit on Montana highways).

We have also stopped by a couple of small Episcopal churches in Jeffers (the Madison River valley) and Emigrant (where we are camped this morning in the Paradise Valley, access to the northern entrance of Yellowstone N.P.) Small still works in the West, and is more the norm than parishes with fulltime priests. These congregations are usually part of an area ministry served by one priest. Others are served by retired priests. And for Trinity in Jeffers and St. Johns in Emigrant, based on their bulletin boards, their ministries appear active and well-supported. Faith works here where two or three,or ten or twenty are gathered.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Wait, there's more

An addendum to yesterday's post. Lookout Pass on the border of Idaho and Montana not only marks the continental divide but also the change from Pacific to Mountain Time. I can't think of a better point to enter mountain time than that creeping climb to 4726 foot Lookout. It also marks a transition in climate: the temp in Washington's high desert (yes, Washington is more than the rhododendrens and western cedar)yesterday pushed 104. This side of the divide it might reach 84. And this morning we had the furnace on as the low dipped to the low 40s.

CORRECTION: Lookout Pass is not on the continental divide, and the valleys below it drain to the Snake River (and eventually the Columbia). Though it does demarcate the time change. The Divide bifurcates the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park further east along the Lewis Range and Livingston Range.

And I forgot to mention dog two: Christopher, our rescue Samoyed. All his parts are working fine, though at times he is like the lion in The Wizard of Oz. But his confidence is improving.


And for those interested in our conveyance:


Today we are leaving St. Regis for East Glacier via Flathead Lake and Columbia Falls and then bisecting the Rockies on Highway 2.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Rediscovery

Communication is on vacation this month. Or, more accurately, on an expedition. Vacation is about disengaging and leaving; what we—my wife, two dogs, and a college student—are doing seems more about transport. Heading west from Wisconsin in a fifth wheel trailer pulled by a Ford F250 Superduty pickup, we have crossed five states with a good portion of our household packaged inside. We seem to be gaining more than losing: altitude as we crossed the Great Plains and wound through the Bitterroots of Montana, weight as we took on water and supplies; and time, as we gained first one hour crossing the Missouri, and then a second hour as we entered Idaho. And somewhere, subliminally, a different perspective.


So much of what defines this trip is the radiation from the sun: hotter and dryer as we venture farther into the plains; and more intensity in the glare off the hood and dashboard. We scribe a straight track into the sun from Fargo to Glendive. There is some variance in the heading, maybe 5 degrees, but for most part it is the straight and narrow of due west. In other words the left cheek and left forearm of the driver is getting a year’s exposure in the space of three days.


Did I mention this is also a palliative venture as our youngest dog is under treatment for lymphoma, stage 5B (there is not stage 5C)? And my mother in law is under hospice care at home? One is 9 and a half (about 67 in human years), the other 89. Going to considerable expense to save one, and considerable distance to bid farewell to the other. We can do no less. So, in one sense this is about taking leave.


Emigrants of the 1840s marked their progress by trading posts and military outposts; for us it is the weekly stops at veterinary clinics for the dog’s anticancer drugs. She has a name: Suki, Japanese for ‘pleasing’ or ‘sweet.’ I have added the sobriquet, chemo dog, at times.
Here in Walla Walla (many waters) it is mid-point on the calendar and on the itinerary. Much of the travel so far has been chasing light, and now turning northeast we begin to move against it. Along the way we have seen this: the world’s largest bison sculpture in Jamestown, North Dakota; mile long freight trains backed up awaiting clearance along the Yellowstone in Montana; expresso drive-ins in Big Timber and other ranch towns in Montana; hundreds of horse trailers and RVs in Omak, Washington for the annual stampede (center piece is the horse herd plunging down the bluff to the river); pillars of smoke from burning off the wheatfield stubble in eastern Washington; and Mount Rainier cloud free and dominating the Cascades like a sumo wrestler. And others.


Experiences have varied: using GoogleEarth to scout out the parking situations at the weekly vet clinic stops (turning a pickup truck tethered to a 28 foot fifth wheel trailer requires wide open spaces); attempting and barely succeeding in maneuvering our 28 foot trailer into a half-moon space at Rainier National Park’s Cougar Rock campground; emptying the trailer cabinets on the tortured pavement of Highway 706 in the forementioned RNP; hitting the wineries in the Walla Walla Valley; loading up on Cheez-Its for the student; chasing the light in the vineyards and foothills of the Walla Walla Valley one evening with a camera lens; and, on the final night there, floating in the shimmering island of the condo courtyard swimming pool—a sort of reflection in a reflection.




So there it is midpoint in the expedition. Not so much the 1805 version, journey of discovery, as reentry and rediscovery. More awaits in Glacier NP, and the North Dakota badlands. Stay tuned.