Onward!

Phoenix, Van Horn, Fort Worth, Little Rock, Nashville, Allentown, Manhattan, Cherry Hill, Narrowsburg, New Brunswick, Ship Bottom, Rockville, Little Rock, Amarillo, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Phoenix. June 25 to July 21. 

The journey started with me just traveling. Gradually or sometimes in sudden and astonishing ways, it turned into not just traveling. 

Sunday, June 25: 

I went to the Budget Rental Car counter at Phoenix Sky Harbor (cities that give their airports poetic names are...charming) and rented what ended up being a 2017 Prius. Difficult to get used to. Push button start? Check. Weird little shifting knob on dash? Check. A dashboard that looks like the control panel for the Space Shuttle? Check. Gliding silently along the highway like some kind of weird dirigible? Check. Etc. It took me a few days to get used to it. 

My regular car is a 1998 Honda Civic with almost 200,000 miles on it. I used to call her Betty but after the breakup she underwent a name change to the much more appropriate Isabel. There's no doubt in my mind she could have made the trip, but she has no air conditioning and no stereo, and I need to rely on her for another year or two for trips to Baja for field work, so I gave her a rest. 

Isabel, chilling curbside for a few weeks

The last time I took an epic road trip across the country was in 2003, to attend my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I was still an active alcoholic then. My usual pattern on road trips at that time was to stop at cheap motels every night after about 12 hours of driving, buy a couple six packs of beer and a pint of whiskey. Settle in for the night. Then get up at about 6 and hit the road again. 

This was my first road trip sober. I have driven thousands of miles since I got sober on April 11th, 2004 (411!)-- but those have been almost all southwestern or Baja miles, not quite the same. The old fashioned trip-across-America-on-the-interstates sort of road trip had not presented itself as an option until now. 

My first order of business and what planted the seed (haha, pun intended) for this journey was attending the Botanical Society of America's annual conference, this time in Fort Worth. I started looking at combined plane and car just for that trip (I am an unregenerate control freak when I fly and almost always need to rent a car-- it's a weird habit of mine). Then I started thinking about just driving. Then I remembered that a former student of mine, a good friend, lived in Nashville. Huh, only a ten hour drive away. Then I noticed that my whole family and my best friend on the East Coast were only another 12 hours of driving from Nashville. The wheels started turning (oh yeah baby pun time) and it all came together. Time to hit the long black ribbon of monotony that is the Eisenhower Interstate System. (Although, admittedly, I went through some breathtaking territory, which if you hang tight through this travelogue, which I am quite sure will get weirder and weirder, so there's a teaser, you'll see pictures of).

On Sunday the 25th of June I had a commitment to give a talk on the research I'm doing in plant conservation biology to the local cactus club. Cactus clubs are quirky, lovable, dedicated groups of people with a relatively singular obsession with cacti and succulents, and they usually have a speaker for their monthly meetings. I love giving these talks because I can let down my academic guard a little bit and show a lot of pretty pictures and unabashedly display my amateur (as in lover) enthusiasm, which the club members share. 

When that was over, at about 5, I hit the road in my weird Toyota Prius, feeling good about my still somewhat unexpected botanical life, with Jack DeJohnette's Album Album the first thing up on my alphabetical playlist of hundreds of records I had recently digitized. 

This seemed auspicious somehow, as it's sanguine, optimistic music inspired by his family and it has a fanfare kind of quality to it. The Fiios X3 II I had loaded all of my MP3's onto was pushing some really high quality audio to the Prius's amazing stereo-- a whole experience I have not had very much of for 13 years now-- music in a car, sounding really good. Another part of this tale is intimately related to this little rectangle of musical joy, which ended up being a major player in a lot of the unfolding strangeness of things. 

I owe A for the tip to this, as she had bought one about year before she ended the partnership with me, and I was impressed by it. I had resisted this entire movement toward music players and digital music files-- still playing records and CDs in my actual, like, desktop (?) stereo. But I am very glad to have made the transition. I remain amazed that 600 records, CDs and MP3 albums fit on the 128 GB micro SD card that goes in this thing. With room to spare. 

I got as far as Van Horn, TX (a somewhat forlorn little town along I-10 that has been a staging area for several botanical excursions to the astonishingly beautiful Big Bend region of TX). Disorientation set in immediately as I realized that, in only about 8 hours of driving, I had advanced through two time zones (because Arizona is on Pacific Time this time of year). I thought I was checking in at 1 in the morning and wondered why the front desk guy at the Quality Inn looked so bleary-- it was 3 a.m. Van Horn time. This weird shift was one of the first jarring things that stranged up this whole epic. How could it possibly be 3 in the morning? 

Sunset near Texas Canyon

The definitely hit it and quit it Quality Inn in Van Horn

The thing is, when I left Phoenix on June 25th, and all along the highway, into the night, through New Mexico, my old adopted home state, through the first part of vast Texas, I was wrapped in nostalgia for the partnership with A. I was echoing on travel memories, the Prius reminded me of her Honda Civic, my heart was broken by the sunset and the memories even of past road trips of mine across the country, of which there were a great many from about 1983-1993. I was on that lonesome road that unwinds endlessly in front of you-- and all you have is yourself in your car and the music that comes up. 

Before I left, I had been so busy, I had forgotten how much pain I was in. Heading east in solitude, there it was again. With no distractions. Indeed, with the cathartic urgings of music, which always open my heart. So I felt like ventricles and atria were bleeding east. The highway with drops all along the way from Phoenix to Van Horn. Dark and dreary, as I had already had 4 full months of time to grieve, goddamn it, had already been to Baja and San Diego and LA and back, had already found new relationships, new friendships, new life starting to emerge. 

But Pluto will not be denied. I had forgotten I was traveling through the Underworld, still. This first leg of the trip brought me back home. The unfolding road might just as well have been the black river Styx. 

Sit tight for a while, my old fearsome buddy Pluto said. It's going to be a long weird ride.