Colors

It happened to be fall foliage season when my sister and I drove across country from New York to Portland this past October. I hadn’t really planned it that way. It’s a good time of year for a move. Not too hot, not too cold. And, fingers crossed, no snow. So the bright scarlet, greenyellow, sienna, purplebrown, luminous ochre, redgreen, deep amber, bloodcrimson, flaming orange, and fiery saffron leaves for 8 days and almost 3500 miles were a bonus.

Driving across country is quite the experience. I highly recommend it. You get to see how the geography and people change from state to state. Wide open spaces mirror wider waistlines as you chug west. People become friendlier and polite after leaving the right coast. Enclosed in your vehicle the countryside feels like its moving and you’re standing still. When you stop for the night you can’t quite believe where you are. If it’s Tuesday it must be Topeka. Really? Really. Although your dining, gas, and sleeping options never quite differ. Oh, look, another Denny’s and Flying J truck stop. And, yes, there will be a Super 8 where you decide to crash for the night. I’ll put money on that. There are a few variations along the way. Some curiously named gas stations in the east called Kum and Go (I’ve had dates like that). Stuckey’s in the midwest, A&W’s in the mountain states, and fill-up station Starbuck’s as you go a little further. Let’s not forget the Auto Hand Washer at the rest areas of Missouri. Stick your hands in an alcove and you get watered, soaped, rinsed, and dried all in about 20 seconds. Where’s the manicure, I’d like to know?

Starting in the east, the geography is rolling with hills and small mountains covered with deciduous woods.The midwest states of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri are endless and fairly treeless. They are relentlessly flat and go on and on for days and days it seems. “Jesus Saves” billboards next to the Adult Superstores. The interstate is unwavering as fields of corn, beans, and sorghum fly by. Finally, and happily, you reach the mountain states. Seeing the Rockies rise before you is such a relief after so much uniformity. From then on the country is dramatic, exciting, and engaging filled with pine forests, quaking aspens, rock formations, and cowboys.

The midwest, I think, is tough to love. Too much flat conservatism to go along with the landscape maybe. You have to look closely. I must say that I was impressed with the eastern Kansas prairie. The colors were tremendous. Rusty oranges and reds. Bleached blonds. Sagey greens and dark chocolate browns. I wish it had been a clearer, sunnier day but the quiet scrubby hills were ghostly and timeless as they disappeared into the mist. The dampness made the colors more vibrant against the neutral gray. I suddenly understood where artists Hopper, Wyeth, and Wood got their inspiration. Prying emotion out of earthy hues, sweeping landscapes, and the hearty loneliness of the population. I could imagine the pioneers on their way west. Mesmerized by the wide openness while looking to prosperity on the far blue horizon.

The beginnings of the Oregon Trail were in Kansas after all. What Sherri and I drove in a day the pioneers covered in roughly a month’s time. Tracing the route of those early settlers, we pushed across the plains from Independence, made our way over the Rockies, headed northwest through southern Idaho, and then crossed into Oregon making our way along the the Columbia River to Portland. We did not, however, have to deal with the sickness, tedium, starvation, death, disastrous river crossings, and the sometime hopelessness of that earlier journey. Just the occasional funkiness of a budget hotel in a small town.

At one point I realized I was on my own Oregon Trail. Like the pioneers I also was looking for prosperity on the far blue horizon. I had decided on my own manifest destiny as a way to move forward. Readjustment was in order and I needed to shake things up. I like change. It makes one experienced, adaptable, and stronger. “An unexamined life is not worth living,” so said Socrates, and there’s no better way to examine your life than by driving cross country. It gives you a chance to think of everything and nothing, freak out a little, ask yourself “what the hell am I doing,” and gauge your next steps. In spite of hardships, those early explorers held on to the hopefulness in their destination and I, too, was taking up the challenge.

On our last day, Sherri and I stopped at an interpretive center for the Oregon Trail near Baker City. Snaking through the gallery we learned by timeline how it all began in 1804 with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. But I kept gravitating to the enormous windows that framed the expanse of fields and mountains. I found what I was most drawn to was seeing the actual ruts made by wagon trains permanently marking the surrounding landscape. The center sat on a windy hill top covered with burnt yellow grass and gray green sage that waved like the sea. Those ruts cut a line from far across those hills. You could feel all that life and history of 200+ years pass in front of you and I was aware of creating my own story in this journey.

But I had been thinking too much about my past, both recent and far. Worrying about my future and what I was in for. What I had left behind and what I was looking forward to. I had to stop myself. I was going a little nuts. I looked at where I was right now, up on that hill top, and stared. The wind was blowing so hard I felt it was going through me — cleaning me out. I could hear nothing else. So after all that obsessing I let myself be mesmerized by the roaring windy silence and the wide blue openness of it all. And then I looked at the colors.