Thomas Erickson
June 2024; August 2024
The sky arches overhead in a dome, light blue at the apex, shading down into an ashen blue as it reaches the ground. Traces of smoke have drifted south from wildfires in Canada. Ahead, the road curves, cutting slantwise across the low rolling hills.
The car vibrates. The road unspools below me. Seams in the asphalt beat out a soft rhythm. The landscape ahead divides and streams by me, the nearby trees parsing the early morning light into an irregular cadence. Car and sky are fixed; the world flows.
The ancient navigators who traveled the south Pacific in their outrigger canoes experienced the world this way. Their canoes were motionless, a stable center, and the ocean and its islands moved past them. Though the islands were far beyond the horizon, they could feel their presence in the patterns of the waves, and in the clouds that floated above them.
I am on a road trip. I have a roll to nibble as I set out. A sandwich for lunch tucked beneath the front seat. A water bottle in the cupholder. My iPhone, on its mount, displays my route. I am no navigator, not so in tune with the patterns of the world that I always know where I am. But the patterns of the world fascinate me; I am trying to learn them.
I have a feeling. Could it be elation? It is quiet, joyful, light, quick. If it were a sound it would be high and clear, perhaps like Tibetan singing bells, stirred into sound by the movement of a finger. Perhaps, as the road moves beneath me, it sets me ringing.
This is a familiar feeling, associated with traveling on my own. I have a memory, decades old, of setting off on vacation. It was, in a sense, my first vacation: the first hiatus during my first full-time job. The work, creating software for the new wave of personal computers, was interesting and even exciting, but it came with a layer of anxiety. I had discovered that I was not very good at programming. And so we – me, and those with whom I worked – went through a period of adjustment, trying to figure out how, or if, I could add value. It was awkward and unsettling. A year had passed, and I had found ways to contribute, but when the prospect of a vacation approached, the delight and liberation that filled me made me realize how much pressure I’d been under.
I had lived in Solana Beach, California, for five years, and had grown to love hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In those days I was entirely on my own, and my idea of a vacation was to get up before dawn and drive 400 miles north to Yosemite National Park for a week of hiking. By leaving early I could arrive by 10am and be confident of getting a walk-in campsite.
I remember the morning I set out. I left promptly at 3am. My route seemed symbolic. First, I navigated the web of southern California freeways, littered with the detritus of civilization, and surprisingly trafficked for such an early hour. Then, after crossing the San Bernadino mountains, I turned onto highway 395 which took me, straight as an arrow, into the desert. First the tangle of civilization, then the emptiness of the wasteland, and then, after an hour, the Sierra Nevada loomed before me, blue and cool and snow-topped.
395 stayed in the flat, dry rain shadow of the mountains. It went roughly north, a few miles to the east of the steep scarp of the Sierra, and seemed as straight as a line on a map. I was eager to get to Yosemite, and the mountains now towering over my left shoulder urged me on.
I was going just a bit over 90 miles an hour when 6 AM arrived and, as I realized later, the first shift of highway patrol officers came on duty. At 6:01 AM red lights were flashing in the rearview mirror. I signaled, slowed, and pulled off onto the shoulder. The officer came up to the door. I cranked down the window.
‘Do you realize how fast you were going?’
‘About 90! It’s my first day of vacation! I’m so happy to get away from work! I’m going hiking!’
The officer seemed taken aback by my candor. I suppose he must have been used to surly drivers with excuses. But the pull-over had not dampened my spirits. My mood was contagious, and soon we were chatting about my plans, and the beauty of the day, and all sorts of things. I had a sense he really enjoyed it. At the end, he said he’d give me a ticket for going 70, rather than 90, ‘but do slow it down – that’s too fast to be safe.’ He gave me the ticket and we went on our ways.
Chastened, but still briming with elation, I tried to maintain a more sensible speed.
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No passing.
Pass with care.
No passing.
Passing lane ahead, 2 miles.
Oncoming traffic uses center lane.
Slower traffic keep right.
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That elation is with me still, rising from somewhere deep within me. Today I am heading towards Houghton, a college town on Michigan’s upper peninsula. I wonder why I still feel this way, setting out. I‘ve been retired for six years, and vacations are no longer a time for releasing stress, relaxing, and restoring my reserves of energy. I think it’s simply that I am stepping out of the routines and patterns that define my life. I feel free to do whatever I please, and that new things await me. I think of the Willie Nelson song: On the road again, goin’ places that I’ve never been, seein’ things that I may never see again…
Not that my life is at all like Willie’s. I’m off to the annual conference of the Institute for Lake Superior Geology, not heading out on tour to sing with my friends. In fact, I know almost no one at the conference. Geology is something I’ve taken up in retirement. I’ve taken a few courses, but I am confident that I will be the least knowledgeable person in any room I’m in. This is a big change after a career of being an expert. Nor do I count as a student: I am not setting out to enter the field; I am in no need of job leads, or contacts, or mentoring. I’m an anomaly, a curiosity. I know, from past experience, that I will be treated with friendliness; but at the same time, I will not fit in.
I am speeding, but no more than the other cars. I’m doing about 70 on this stretch of two lane rural road, unwinding before me under the blue dome of the sky. Just here the ditches are filled with marsh marigolds, painting meandering yellow stripes alongside the road. Farther back are stands of birches. Every now and then the ditch widens into a shallow pond filled with last year’s cattails, brown and broken, bowing beneath the weight of their seedheads; soon they will collapse into the muck and be replaced by a new generation.
While I am filled with elation, at the same time I don’t like leaving home. I’ve never liked leaving home. I don’t know what will happen in my absence. So I prepare. I like to have the house in order, in good shape. I’m not sure why. It just feels like if I have everything in its place, bad things are less likely to happen. Mostly this has to do with having the house clean: floors swept, dishes in the dishwasher, clothes put away. If I have time, I will also make sure everything is neatly arranged on my desk top, even though normally it is quite untidy. I’ve also made sure that there is plenty of food on hand; my wife is staying behind and she doesn’t drive. Never mind that she is strong and resourceful and can manage just fine on her own. Never mind that it’s a three-block walk to the store. I just feel a little bad for leaving. We love one another’s company, and will both be a bit lonely during the trip. I’ll miss her, and the way in which our individual routines entwine to create something larger than either of us.
So here I am, leaving home, which I do not like, and heading off to a conference where I won’t fit in, which I will not like either. Yet I have this feeling. Perhaps it is not so much about feeling freed up, as it is about being open to change. I am stepping out of the very comfortable, very happy patterns of my life. The nest of routines I’ve woven is a cozy shelter, but it’s good to feel chilly sometimes. This elation has a bit of a shiver to it. It is the travel itself, not the destination, that matters. Seeing things that I may never see again.
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Road ices before bridge.
Fire danger high today.
Yield to pedestrians.
No passing zone.
Truck entrance.
Wayside rest.
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I am passing North Branch, Minnesota. There is a big outlet mall here. When my wife and I drive north, typically to Lake Superior, we always joke as we’re passing North Branch. North Branch has outlet stores. We pretend that we desperately want to stop there to shop the great deals. But:
‘Oh dear, I missed the exit.’
‘We must go back!’
‘Oops, too late.’
‘Oh well. Next time!’
It’s not so much a joke as a set piece of dialog. We have a lot of those in our life together. Little back-and-forth’s, triggered by events or places or moments. We both know our lines, and enjoy saying them.
I am approaching a rest stop. The big bright blue sign with white lettering advertises drinks, parking, and a dog area. Wouldn’t it be fun if you could stop at the dog area and it would have dogs you could pet or play fetch with? But no such luck. Nevertheless, in just a minute or two, I will pull off and take a brief rest. I like rest areas. They vary so much in their character. They may be nothing more than a restroom break, or they may be lovely areas with historic signage, picnic tables, and beautiful vistas.
…Where is it? I think I missed it. Oh well. Next time!
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Pickleball!
Bingo, 6pm.
Hayward sucks.
Got junk, we buy.
Gram’s taxidermy studio.
Pontoon restoration specialist.
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I am in Wisconsin and driving through an area of once-cultivated fields. They have been abandoned. Trees are spilling into their open areas, smaller trees in the frontmost ranks. Birch saplings are out in front, but behind them loom successive waves of older trees, many of them conifers, each rank a bit taller, moving to reclaim their territory.
The hills here are regular. They are like long straight-line breakers rolling across the ocean. I count off about forty seconds from the crest of one hill to the next. And again, and again – forty seconds, plus or minus a few. I try to recall my geography. These hills are stabilized sand dunes, left over from the retreat of the glaciers.
It’s a funny thing about glaciers. In the popular mind – or at least in the minds of those who market bottled water – glaciers are a symbol of purity, towering edifices of blue crystalline ice. But in reality, glaciers are dirty. Really dirty. They are titanic bulldozers, flattening hills and excavating valleys, grinding solid rock into sand, mixing it into the massive frozen slurry that is the glacier. If you visit the end or “toe” of a glacier, the point at which its forward movement is balanced by the rate at which it melts, you will find a lot of dirt-encrusted ice. If you think that the black-coated end-of-winter snowdrifts along city streets are dirty, you’ve never seen the toe of a glacier.
When the glaciers here began to melt in earnest, about twelve thousand years ago, they released massive quantities of water – along with silt, sand and gravel – creating what is called a glacial outwash plain. Over time, the flow of water sorted the solids, carrying silt a large distance, sand a lesser distance, and gravel a short distance. Later still, as the water ebbed, the wind took over. This is not wind as we know it, but katabatic wind, dense glacially-cooled air that pours over the edge of the retreating glacier, its frigid weight pulling it downslope at an unrelenting pace, lasting for centuries. This wind blew the glacial silt far south to produce the fertile soils of Iowa and Nebraska, and sculpted the sand into long dunes that rolled across the northern Midwest. Later yet, as the cold winds abated, sedges, grasses and other pioneer plants took root, and froze the dunes into place, creating the hills over which I now travel.
Although it is a conceit of mine that my car is fixed in place as the world passes by, it was not so long ago, as geologists reckon time, that the land did indeed move, rank after rank of dunes tumbling forward, waves of sand driven by a cold wind.
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Roadwork ahead.
Rumble strips.
Flagman.
Rumble strips.
One lane ahead.
Stop.
Grooved pavement.
Slow.
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I have crossed from Wisconsin into the upper peninsula of Michigan – the U P they call it. The hum and rhythm of well-maintained highways has given away to the avant-garde arrythmia of asphalt-patched roads. I slow, both for the patches, and because, as dusk approaches, I am wary of deer.
I try to get a sense of the land around me, but it is mostly forest and I can’t see far. I am moving northeast onto the Keweenaw peninsula. On the map it is a long finger of land that reaches northeast into Lake Superior, tracing the edge of a volcanic rift that opened a billion years ago. The rift, which stretched for two thousand miles, nearly split the continent in half; but it “failed,” as the geologists say, and left great swath of volcanic scar tissue that is exposed in the Lake Superior basin. It is a good setting for a geology conference. And a good place for me to learn to better see the patterned traces of ancient forces.
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US-45 N.
Lakeshore Drive.
Library Road.
Super 8 by Wyndham.
Customer Parking Only.
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I pull into the parking lot. I find a slot. I turn off the engine.
The singing vibration of the road has ceased. The land no longer flows by me. It is fixed in place, spreading out in all directions to the great circle of the horizon. I am the center.
Now I must shift from navigating a well-signed lattice of highways and towns to the more uncertain task of navigating social space. It will be a new and different journey.
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