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.