The Plains

A panorama of divine blue shown over a terrestrial pool, issuing a pale imitation of the scattered light and greater hues above it from its lesser body. Westward the water broadened. In its limited scope, it mimicked the infinite image of deep, pure sky, this lesser half complimenting its twin. The reflected symmetry was softly divided by a distant arboreal horizon, unifying forded east to coming west.

Now on the blank prairie a rare tree stood, robust, overlooking its company of grass-laden hills and beloved neighboring window lake. A subtle breeze folded through the open, pulling ripples across the lake's crystalline surface, brushing between the twiddling leaves of the tree. The limber bows were galvanized into a tendril dance of vivid, mystic motions. It waved as I passed.

A pheasant, in brilliant coat to match the prismatic season erupted from the green depths of the roadside and clucked away, flapping its wings violently on the quiet air, descending, then fading beneath the strands of grass at a distance, safe from my threat. On a pond, a terrorized mother duck bugled her warning, pressed and ushered on her startled ducklings, all who scooted forward with spurts across the surface toward a shroud of yellow-gray reeds and tall green leaves sprouting up round the water's edge, thrusting a quivering trail behind them in their paddle-foot retreat.

The hills grew in height as I approached the Missouri. It snaked a path between the green, waving lands, swollen and raised by northern flood rains, distributing the eroded soils of agriculture southward. At Mobridge I crossed the river and followed west into further open prairies and bounding hills, all vacant but for the purple and yellow kaleidoscope of wildflowers sprouting from the wild grasses. A trailing length of wire fence paralleled the roadside, and an occasional distant, solitary unit of reservation housing stood on the plain, a dirt drive bending over the land from each.

Distance and duration between towns increased. I was entering what was once the Western frontier, and it was evident by the names of the towns (Little Eagle, Thunder Hawk, White Butte) and also in the tangible feeling of an absence in the land. The towns Bison, and then Buffalo passed by, both dull and forgotten, the surrounding lands all vacant of their namesake. These empty hills were meant for the bison to roam, slowly walking, massive, brown faces and beards dipped to the ground, gnashing blades of grass in rows of teeth; a collection of broad shoulders, chests, forelegs, and heads draped with matted fur; bald sinewy bodies and rears in spring shedding the last tethers of fur from winter; cloven hooves dug into the soil beneath the great weight; wild horns bending from the skulls' opposite hemispheres to the burning sun; a fluid unit of life flowing, undulating over the slopes; literal behemoths plowing the land, pausing occasionally, throwing themselves with a great rumble on a barren patch and rolling in the dust, great clouds billowing to the sky; the vast body spreading and multiplying, dispensing seeds and perpetuating the prairie and enduring the annual, disparate shifts in climate; docile, black eyes looking patiently on a frozen white landscape, penetrating arrows of wind flowing over and around the phalanx; curling drifts sculpt round the solid matriarchal ring, they themselves a bulwark against the frigid months, unwintered young shivering in the sheltered core; insulating beards and locks grown thick and long on their bodies in the designated season, gathering lengths of frost to them as they stand stalwart, patient, wind-blazoned, or trudging through the barren expanse; steam rising from the nostrils, staring on white space, preserving their lives, strong, resolute, beyond humility or pride. I see their absence, an invisible scar of a once richer west spent.

Plains undulated to every distance, rolling, rolling with brushing wind. The tops of silos and a water tower on the horizon laid along the length of road, peaking above the grassy waves. Old wooden buildings, weathered by centuries and faded, grew toward me and I came to a gas station, a propped up pickup shedding its parts in the oily garage. The prairies here were all designated reservations. A few native men hung out in front of the shop window in greasy t-shirts, shooting the breeze on their midday work break. I went into the station, bought some chips and refilled my water, the next town being thirty miles off and without a guarantee there'd be a station there. I had to keep better stock of my supplies now.

I threw my leg over top of my bike, kicked my foot into its strap cage, and started pedaling off the lot. Squinting down the street the way I'd come from I saw two odd shifting dots on the roadside. I stood and waited, with excitement growing, and decided it had to be two far off people on packed bikes riding through these same afternoon plains toward town. Once they'd come closer to the station I distinguished clearly a guy and girl, hauling along on white bikes with four saddle bags each strapped to the sides. They wore black spandex shorts and matching riding jerseys, helmets strapped on, crowing their heads, and every exposed inch of skin colored brown by so many cycles of the sun. These were clean adventurers in all the vestments of their trade. Everything between the two matched. They coasted across from the street's far shoulder, hopped up the curb and squeezed on their brakes to a stop on the sidewalk beside me, meeting my big smile and wide eyes with great smiles and eyes of their own.

Through an exchange and brief talk we told each other of our separate origins, routes, and destinations and I came to know them each as Adam and Christie. They were pausing here at the station for lunch. Christie unhooked a pannier from her bike, “You want to come hang out for a bit?” I grabbed my chips, followed into the store's meager deli, and we each took seats in the folding chairs at the solitary square table.

Christie unbuckled the pannier she was carrying and removed a bag of tortillas, placing two on the table. Adam tore neat corners from two mayonnaise packets, and then drew a winding white line over each of the tortillas middles with finesse gained only from routine. Christie carved the top off a tuna can and spooned dollops over the mayo. Adam waited with eager eyes and then trickled almonds and cranberries on top of it all from a clear plastic bag. “It's kind of like having chicken salad,” he explained while he rolled his up, grinning in response to my quizzical look. “Anyway, we've experimented and rotated meals quite a bit by now, and this just never seems to get old.” Everyone really does develop their own unique patterns.

They'd been out since January, crossing bitter New Mexican colds under the freeze and blizzards of the southern Rockies. Across they'd gone through Kansas and Missouri flats, the bayou Louisianan coasts, bridging the Mississippi, Florida panhandle, pointing noses north to Maine, stretching themselves across the east in the flourishing green spring, then bending route west, and rolling out a similar path to what I'd done since Ohio. Come mid-October they hoped to have hit at least a piece of every state on the way to a continental finish in Washington state. “Then once we get there we'll take off on a Pacific ferry from Seattle for Alaska, and spend a few days riding round Anchorage,” pulling a full-circle in the seasons before one final jump to the island paradises in Hawaii, completing their self-propelled circumnavigation of the country.

“What's been your favorite state in all your travels?” Christie asked me for comparison.

“South Dakota,” I responded instinctively. “Maybe it's just because I'm here now, and it's most rich to me since it's most recent, but I love every part of this land. The barren wilds of the Badlands to the fields and fields of crops. It gets me and I get it. What about you?”

“We liked Wisconsin a lot. It's all trees and hills, beautiful, all picturesque, and the most kind people and positive experiences, I think. Plus we had nice weather the whole time. It was just simple and beautiful riding through there.”

I started thinking about where we were now in all this land, how, out of the immense length and breadth of it, in our slow paces we crossed ways here. A great expanse of thousands and thousands of miles behind us and now we sat, in the midst of months with months yet to follow, and so many unseen things lying beyond the fielded horizon.

I looked out on the peaceable plains, and I wondered why I'd said that this place, of it all, was my favorite. Maybe this was still home? but no, that was limited to the ways of nostalgia and reminiscence now. It didn't harbor that feeling for me anymore. If it had once fully possessed that position, those days were old and gone to me. Its people and soil were known to me and pleasing, its scent and sight satisfying to my discontented depths. Its substance was integrated with me more so than the substance of any other save one: Arizona. That raw state of infinite canyons, the points of the San Francisco peaks, the towering pines there, the transitory Flagstaff streets, the three mesas and their prophetic tribes: all these own the same perfection I find in Dakota's stalks of corn, the pristine stillness of the Black Hills in winter, a copper sun on the primordial Badlands, or quartzite columns on the Split Rock Creek. All of these, in thought and presence, comforted and placated me. Both put me in a reverence still (and always would), but were these those things which defined for me home?

My past and childhood, a strangely nomadic modern American life, which was defined by a chain of migrations, my parents and sister and I tossing each year between the various states and regions during my most impressionable age, instilled in me a grand appreciation for the beauty that is perpetual change. My home has exceeded the boundaries of states. It be only this country, America, having held me all my life, who has served me as home. Her parts had cradled and grown me in her arms, turning me over in her many fingered hands, bringing me up to intimately know the textures of her various touch. Only America as a whole, herself, may claim what her individual parts cannot. She alone is my land and my home; she alone, my bed and my rest.

My new friends were going west along the same road as me, the only road, and so we went on together for the next couple days' ride. There was a warmth in their company and the brightness in their eyes. They had a well of perfectly measured friendliness that begged to be drawn from. We all wanted to take the country, so we did.




Photograph albums: 1, 2,  3, and #4. Just click those numbers and enjoy! Off to Mexico for a week, then more posts.

Old Home Familiar Pt. II, or Red Iron

A bright afternoon, Broeks, Jeremy and I set to fishing for bluegills at a silky green little pond. The oblong water was circled by a crop of cattails and rushes with grass hills rising radially from its indent. We dangled our feet in it, sitting on the edge of the dock, casting, reeling. Eventually the warmth of summer coaxed us in to taking a dip. Jeremy dashed and flopped off the dock and then tried swimming to the bottom. At the surface with a splash and gasp, “Oh, it gets cold down there! Even just as deep your feet are.” It was a hot day. Broeks sprinted off the edge, long-jumping, and I followed my own casual way. We splashed, dove and jumped again and then trudged up through the slimy weeds on the bank, gathered up the poles and tackles and drove back along dirt roads to the house. It all made me want to get a telescoping rod to pack with me and go riding around the vast northwest wilderness from water to water harvesting my catch and having my hunger satisfied by my labors directly. I was starting to become preoccupied with the thought of riding again, but these days provided a kind of rest it's not so easy to wake from.

The next afternoon Bork, a friend I hadn't seen in two years, knocked on the door and came in trying to gather everyone up for a tubing trip down the Big Sioux. It's a big brown tributary of the greater Missouri and it was, at the time, bulging with the heavy rainfall of a flooded North Dakota. He'd brought a big case of beers in hopes of persuading all to come and float down it in the heat, drinking as another happy summer day slipped serenely by. Everyone's plans conflicted though, so we sat around and drank inside, watching the lazy time go all the same.

Broeks was going to his parents' cabin for the fourth of July. The cabin sat on the brim of Red Iron Lake in the northeast South Dakotan plains, a land carved into hills by the glacial Pleistocene and pockmarked blue with myriad lakes in its gullies. Jeremy and another friend, Jordan, would drive up to meet him to catch fish on the lake, and I decided I'd go along with them. I didn't so much want to repeat my path of two years ago across the state, watching the broad untouched land flow so tantalizingly behind the barbed-wire limits of the interstate.

The morning of departure we made up seventy-two hambuns (a simple sandwich of burger bun, ham, and slice of American cheese) and packed them all into the plastic bun bags. We met with Jordan in front of his house, strapped down all the luggage, rods and my bike onto the boat which he'd hitched to his truck, and then we started our way north with a hurry later in the afternoon than had been intended. The soft orange sun was already setting to the west as the land transitioned out of smooth flowing fields of crops to dapples of water laced with more cattails and rushes, here in the dreamy wilderness where the migrating geese and emerald and sapphire ducks, great pelicans, and wading cranes waft about the pools' wooded islands, trembling leaves; solitary pheasants wander throughout fallow fields, beautiful proud turkeys promenade on plowed amber lands, and timid soundless deer all gather together, in hidden recesses of the tall dry grass, peaceful and curious.

One hundred-fifty miles north we crossed into Sisseton as shuffling silhouettes appeared, bound in the yellow of windows against idle blue evening. We came to a gas station where we bought our week's worth of drinks and then it was only a short distance to the cabin. Off of the highway a dirt drive led through a tunnel of trees coming out along a line of cabins which overlooked the lake's pebbly shore. The fleeing crescent moon fell on the western horizon across the black lake, ripples breaking and bending its thin yellow curl.

We parked and walked down the hill and around the cabin into the backyard, finding everyone sitting in a ring of plastic chairs around a rising, biting fire. All of their faces turned to us, attempting to distinguish who we were in the scattered light, and with realization came smiles and welcoming. I hadn't seen most of these people since years ago. Broeks was across the fire beside his parents' flickering faces, and continuing round the circle there sat the Hubers, a family whose cabin was a little farther down the drive and whose sons had been our schoolmates. Next to them was a family from Minnesota who introduced themselves as friends of the Hubers' and Broekhuis's. This was the meeting place this year for friends on the Fourth.

Away back to the truck we went and unloaded the things we'd need for the night, and set up our tents in the yard while fighting off mosquitoes. Jeremy fixed a cooler full of condensed orange juice, vodka, and beer all mixed together and we hauled it down and sat at the fire with the everyone else. He scooped me up a plastic cup of it. The smoke of the fire supplied a kind shelter against the bugs. Everyone wanted me to tell what stories I had, and so I started on the drink to loosen my tongue and started rattling off a few. Everyone else was already steeped at least a little in alcohol, so they were a lovely audience giving all the appropriate gasping and interjections. The night quickly descended into a hazy stupor (for me at least) and some of the party eventually faded off to bed indoors. Drunken ramblings between those of us remaining was directed inevitably to a discussion of God, upon which differing assumptions put a schism in the company. The talk disappeared but between me and one other. Black night pulled in cool around us, the waves of heat sighing from the fire against the warmth of my red face compounding my delirium. I didn't want to talk of it anymore. Soon thereafter, everyone conceded that the night was over and Jeremy, Jordan and I stumbled up across the grassy hill to our tents, tired and wondering, and I felt lost.

When the first hint of orange fell on opalescent clouds above Jeremy and Jordan had taken the boat and were on the lake fishing. I slept until I was sweating in my sleeping bag, woke and went down to the end of the dock to read. Eventually Broeks called to me from the top of the stairs and we went into the Hubers dining room where everybody else was for a big cabin-type breakfast with pancakes, fruit, little pancake balls with cream cheese in the middle and eggs. Me and Broeks took his motorboat out to test the cut of the lake afterward. We roared over the water, bouncing heavily against the undulating, crested surface, with wind-in-face and bur-r-ring toward the opposite shore. He pulled the boat around and sped to another edge of the lake. Jordan and Jeremy were there, scooting along guided by trolling motor, both standing erect on the hull of the long sleek boat in sunglasses, with t-shirts under the caps on their heads like a keffiyeh covering their raw, red necks from the sun, lines cast, searching out the illusive fish's haven. They spent every day like this, or else bouncing from lake to lake putting every spot to the test, expanding their location list, what they'd caught there and with what lure, trying every secret and hidden place they could endeavor into.

Broeks and I went with them a few times. I had no license so couldn't fish, but I watched the gurus and learned what I could through my laymen eyes. Sometimes they'd go to the truck bed and trade the rods in for bows with arrows tethered on the fletching side to a reel on the bow. In silent attention they'd carefully step among the reeds by a culvert or through the grassy ridges by aquatic tree roots probing to find where the beastly carp were gathered below water's glare. They whispered to one another, “There's a big one by your feet. You see it?” as the carp slipped against the stream. With a release of the fingers the arrow embarked, and in a fraction of a moment dove discretely with barely a “plunk.” Its point struck the fish's muscly middle and drove in through the tightly knit scales opposite. As it writhed and pumped against the tension, it was pulled up, greeted with cheers and compliments.

After dusk on the Fourth we celebrated with fireworks on a neighbor's dock, joining our stocks to have a big light show and a loud night in honor of independence. A light wind blew in from across the water causing some of the hot sparks to fall on top of us, which burned a few, so everyone pulled the chairs farther away from the dock, and settled back again with beers in hand to watch the banging, sparkling sky from a greater distance.

In the morning, after Broeks' parents had got back from their early walk, they fried us eggs, toasted bread and cut up some moist fruit as well. Jeremy and Jordan arrived at the dock after we'd finished eating and we all embarked onto Red Iron. Meandered along the shore following the lakeside, I sat in one of the chairs reading while they stood casting in the shallows, switching between buzz-baits, spinners, or jigs testing what would work. There hadn't been any catches. The trolling motor pulled us slowly by an old brown house on the shore. In its window a native lady stood, still and watching us, lit by the day against the comparable darkness of the artificial light inside.

The house pulled out of sight behind a grove of trees as we came farther along the shoreline. “What is she doing?” I looked up and saw Broeks' gaze was intent on something behind us. The lady was in the water and swimming at us, her head bobbing over the flurried surface. She kept on, pressing and pushing, dove down beneath and I saw she still wore her jeans and all her clothes. She rose a little closer to our boat and continued pressing her body toward us. Broeks yelled out to her, “Are you okay?” Exasperated she uttered something mysterious and ghostly in her native tongue, her ethereal voice reverberating from the trees and over the clear warmth of the lake. She couldn't maintain the mechanical pace of the boat's engine and eventually stopped her pursuit, floating in the darkness of the water, her hand resting on a log at the foot of the tree grove, glaring after us.

We tried to reason why she had pursued us, but never could understand. I left the next day, meeting Broeks' parents on the highway while they were on their morning bike ride over the near green hills of the northern plains and I went farther west into forlorn lands.


More pictures on Facebook: Albums 1, 2,  3.

Old Home Familiar Pt. I

A vigorous, opposing wind blew, bending against the growing, green-row slopes. The hills curved with perfect fields and grasses, moving with a turbulent midday dance of bright green jubilation to the great white sun. Cottonball cream clouds with the baby blue abyss threw patches of shade and sun alike onto the waving slopes.

I rode against the sharp piercing air, a bandana over my ears to silence its howl, the brim of my hat tugged down and my glasses on to keep my eyes from drying. Slowly and constantly moving west, I inched for hours into the wind. Everything turned monotonous. My eyes settled to the asphalt streaming immediately before me. But slowly, unconsciously, the black road faded from vision. My mind began to wind with ecstatic, vibrant dreams of the amber evening ahead, and I forgot where I was.

Straight ahead, Sioux Falls: my old home familiar. Just out town past the white water tower and beyond the dusty line of railroad tracks to the dirt road, opening on glowing stretches of fields where from far off piqued does watch intensely the billowing dust of the road dispense, and turning left down the drive - there the blue house of all my old friends from golden old high school days seeming so far away and so long passed. These dear delicate images stirred up in me with an imminent sense of proximity while a blur of Iowan pavement dragged on, ineffectually. I'd get rolling papers and tobacco, and off to the ice cream shop for my sweet pint of coffee-brown chocolate ice cream in a big Styrofoam cup, to the grocery store's great big beer room to deliberate over a while, and then seeing all of my beloved people of that town, to clink frothy beers round a rollicking front-yard fire hearing all about their lives of the past year.

Looking up I recognized the rolls of hills ahead and was pulled from my daydream. I was tired but most of the day had escaped without notice and knowing I was near was a relief. The first veil of buildings passed me and the town grew thicker. The place returned to me like a pair of lost shoes, worn in, long forgotten, but found afresh and slipping me into it, comfortable and perfect. Being in town gave me a yearning for a cigarette. I bounced from store to store looking for tobacco, and at the third shop and I'd found a packet. On the hot concrete outside the store I sat down, sore, aching and wind-beaten. Pedestrians striding by, seeing me and my bike, went without acknowledging or shot me with sharp eyes of contempt. I didn't care. I rolled a cig and tried to call Jeremy, but he didn't pick up so I started to move across town toward the house.

On the south side I stopped at a restaurant for tater tots and spicy cheese. Sitting on the curb outside a man came by and handed me a folded up $10 bill. Flabbergasted, I said thanks and then tried again at calling Jeremy.

He answered, “Nathaniel Benjamin!”

I told him I'd got to town and was eating at Cliff and 57^th.

“No you're not. Where? Do you see me? In a red truck.”

I looked around and I actually did see him, in a red truck idling at the red light. He turned and pulled through an adjacent parking lot, then drove up jolting to a halt at my curb. Biggest town I'd been in in what seemed to me a long while, yet, out of the whole preoccupied place there he stood before me. We caught up briefly. He was just off work and had half a pizza which he took out, offered me a slice, and then went straight to perusing my bicycle and its, what were to him, strange furnishings. He did this a good while then with a “See ya there,” drove off to meet me at the house.

I went straight to it and knocked on the front door. Drew opened it up, “Thanny! How've you been?” That was how I'd been known in those old days. In the main room Jonah was sleeping on the couch, and dragged himself slowly to waking. Those two lived reversed days, staying up through the night to count their cards at the new casino complex on the brim of town, or else kept up by video games in a dry-eyed stupor, tethered to the blinking television into drowsy dawn.

The ancient golden retriever, Buddy, lazily roamed the carpet. He stopped and looked at me a moment with his dull, far-removed eyes of a sage and flapped his tail a little. Then he collapsed onto a deliberately chosen patch of carpet to doze, his big tired body perpetually devoid of energy. Jeremy came down the stairs, stepped around the dog and told me Broeks was on his way.

I followed Jeremy through the garage and around to the backyard to let out his black Labrador, Diesel, from the chain link kennel. Last I was here this had housed three pet ducks, not a dog, but they'd apparently escaped or more likely been cooked up and eaten. Diesel bounded off into the grass, sniffing and biting at the little wild flowers. He was a burly black hunting dog bred and intended for fetching and listening. The South Dakota wilderness is one only experienced with a rifle or a fishing pole.

Broeks arrived. “Are you reading anything right now?” he asked me, then also if I'd searched through the bookmobile yet. We always exchanged our recent discoveries, musical or literary, but now I didn't know what he meant. “That bus out back is stuffed full with dusty books.” I'd never known.

We walked over the grass to the faded red bus on the edge of the property, its tires deeply entrenched in the ground. “Sioux Falls Public Library Bookmobile” was traced on its sides in worn red. Behind the springy door and up the steps hung the stagnant, musty air of a vault. Broeks eyed the dim book spines all around us, “It's all the landlord's, but I've come in plenty of times and taken stuff out. He'll never read 'em anyway. It's been back here for eternity.” Books of all kinds filled the shelf walls, or stood in precarious piles on the front seats and floor, mingled among boxes of old analogue records in paper sleeves. War histories, girths of fiction, politics collections, archives of Nat Geo arching back to the sixties, Socrates dialogues, intros to archeology, astronomy, economics, elementary school texts, & everything else. A film of dust had settled on all upward faces, burning auburn in the angular sunlight bent through the round rear window. I took five novels. I was hauling too many books around as it was.


More pictures on Facebook: Albums 1, 2, & 3.

Pieces of Iowa Pt. II

Josh's house was down the street and a block away from the town's axis road. I pushed my bicycle into his garage while he took two bottles of beer from the fridge, passing one to me as I set the bicycle against the wall, and we went inside with them, wiling away into twilight with beers and wandering talk. I fell into asleep on the couch around midnight as the music stream flowed from the ebbing speakers, or Josh strummed on his reverberant guitar to a vast invisible undulating audience, me a member listening from my quiet kaleidoscope dreaminess. And upon sober early morning, I left a thanks note on the kitchen table and the town behind, into an off-white haze of fog and intermittent blankets of vapor rain falling, and to what would have been a bleak day.

After a couple miles down the Amish country road, a truck pulled into the shoulder ahead and stopped my riding. A man opened the door and stepped out from the truck-side into the haze. “Heard you got a little drunk last night,” he said with raised eyebrows and a grin, throwing me for a loop. A girl of her early twenties came from the passenger side, around the truck and stood next to her father, akimbo, “I'm Amanda,”. They knew Josh and asked if I wanted to hang around town a few more days for the weekend ride they had planned. “This town you're just leaving is actually a really big biking community,” she told me.

All I knew was I didn't want to ride in the rain, so without resolving any plans we put my bike into the truck bed, went to Amanda's dad's house and dropped it off. Then in the truck I was taken into Cedar Rapids where they were moving Amanda's sister Laura Lea's things into her new apartment. We hopped through town picking up some chairs, a table, a recliner. “Betcha didn't think you'd be doing this today,” as we lifted a round glass table out of the truck, “Needed somebody to help out. That's just why we picked y'up, you know.” Nothing they ever said was serious. Afterward off to a dim restaurant for dinner, them conversing in family sarcasms through an appetizers and meal. It was indeed a day of work, but was more comfortably spent than in suspense riding under threat of rain.

When we were back to Independence, Amanda and I rode on bikes through the fogged empty streets a couple of blocks from her dad's to her house. Her covered front deck space was lined by broad window panes, looking onto the lane. We took seats in the hanging canvas chairs, rocking forward and back as the dull, shadowy sky turned a deeper gray. The neighborhood was empty and quiet and calm with early evening stillness as we swayed, talking about what to do, which itself became something to do. A vapid, indecisive moment for the quiet contemplation of nothing, or passive hearing of the hushing sound of a raindrop mesh drifting over the wooden steps and grass carpet, all of it originating from the kind circumstance of Amanda's company.

Eventually we went across the lawn to the neighbor's garage. A bunch of guys were drinking inside. The place had been fashioned over time into a sort of beer den. They talked, sitting on extracted car seats up against the walls, and yellow light bulbs hanging on tethers from the ceiling like a makeshift lounge, amusing themselves with nothing in particular, delaying tomorrow. “Just a low-key night,” sipping, bottle in hand. They were friendly with a natural, unsullied, middle-western friendliness that would give to the end of giving, given a recipient in honest need. They were genuinely happy simply to be, if things would be maintained and remain undisturbed. After a while Amanda and I returned to her house over the damp dark lawn and went inside, sitting down before the television, the billowy recliner and alcohol-fog lulling me soon to sleep.

At waking, the television still flickered idly, but the room was empty and I sat watching cartoons awhile. Soon, though, I lost patience, scrawled another note, and took off under the new day's old gray sky, onto the two-lane highway stretch west to rumble along against the wind with fury, being pecked by raindrops. I donned my gray sweatshirt, pulling the hood up over my hat, and knotting hood-lace in a bow for warmth and shield against the wind and rain. A dark, bitter hour slowly turned by, schlepping away incrementally into the windy, rainy blaze. Miserably wet and cold, with no shelter, I kept telling myself it could be worse, but was relieved when a white pickup slowed down beside me, and through rolled-down window the driver yelled out, “Hey, are you wanting a ride?”

“Yes, please!” I said looking over through blurred squinting eyes, nodding and smiling. He pulled off ahead and helped me load my bike into the truck bed. I lifted the front end, he the back, and I pulled it in by the handlebars, laying it down. The shoulders of his polo and the front of his his khakis were shaded by the spatter of rain when we got into the truck.

“I figured this is no weather to be riding in,” he said, shaking his head. The seats were comfortable and warm. He shook my hand. His hair speckled gray, he looked the part of a burly blue collar who'd labored his way behind a desk. Then we took off, zipping on fast down the road. Seeing everything go by so quickly made me somewhat uneasy, so I mostly watched northward as the perpendicular plains passed in the window. The blanket of clouds' tattered edge broke against a thin sliver of blue, settled on the horizon like oil at the bottom of the watery sky. He went on a bit about where I was headed if I were going west, about Waterloo and then Fort Dodge where he'd be stopping.

We were flying down the road, 80 miles an hour, and he switched the conversation, “You find many kinky girls along the way?” I brushed his question off with a laugh. Then he threw me off, “How about any guys, then?”

I laughed again in hesitation, then,“What do you mean?”

“You know kinky guys trying to get with you. I only ask cause I get like that once in a while.”

The truck became a bit uncomfortable, “Uh, nope.”

“Would you ever?”

“I'm just into girls, really.”

“How about for fifty bucks? You know, I just want to rub it a little.”

My eyes were broad and staring down as the road continued by and, though chuckling avertedly, I grew a pinch nervous now and squeezed out a weak “No thanks.”

Wise to the tension he'd made he graciously wiped the slate clean, “Well just thought I'd ask. Gotta respect it, when somebody says 'no'. That should be that. It's just... a guy like that gets lonely out here,” trailing off. He couldn't call himself anything but 'a guy like that'. There was a shame in him. 'A guy like that' would get lonely in this part of the country, and while I was still uncomfortable I couldn't grudge him and actually grew a little sad for him behind a recomposed facade. He grew quiet and fading, and in his blank blue eyes staring ahead I saw his own sadness, his remorseful mourning from loneliness sadness.

He dropped me off shortly after, taking me a little past the town and away from the traffic, leaving me at a little park with a concrete table underneath a tree where I could keep partly out of the rain, and then he left. The rain soon slowed and ceased, but the pallid spread of clouds remained, keeping all in dull shadow, and the shriek of wind continued, howling against me throughout the day as I pedaled on to nowhere.

More pictures for you on Facebook Albums 1, 2, & 3. Just click on the numbers. Currently in Phoenix at my parents' house for a couple weeks of total meditative rest.

Pieces of Iowa Pt. I

And into Iowa, where the people are kind, open, sympathetic, and inviting all around. Just outside Cedar Rapids I, on a hot day, stopped at a highway corner and opened my map for finding the way forward. A lady in a van pulled slowly by, slowing and halting, and called out to me from her open window, “You need help? Know where ya are?” so I dismounted my bicycle on the shoulder and went over, map in hand. She showed me with her finger precisely how to get where I was going, passed on a cold liter root beer gift, and parted with farewells.

By these directions finding my way past the little towns surrounding, I came into Cedar Rapids, from the east, and got in contact with some people living here who I'd found through a travel network. All afternoon I rode through the big town's stretch of summer heat and construction, with shoulders all torn up and the street signs gone, trying by might to get to the outdoor shop on the west side where I'd get a new can of stove fuel, as mine was long ago empty. After finding this I retrod my long hectic path to arrive at these peoples' place in the late day. I had got good directions from them over the phone to the middle of town where they resided, but managed to make myself thoroughly lost anyway. Like I've said before, highway navigation is one thing, but cities are a different beast, especially Cedar Rapids in the disorienting swelter of summer. They charitably decided to come pick me up instead, finding and stopping lost, confused me as I was ignorantly pedaling into the north-of-town countryside.

Teresa was the mother of the house. She showed me into the room, where she said I could stay as long as I needed, and asked me if I'd want a shower or to eat first. Also met Joel, a kid in the upper years of high school. He was taking time off from everything in his preparation for upcoming travel to Israel with his brother, a medic in Afghanistan. Joel was reserved, but kind and easy to be around, and made a deliberate effort to host while I was around. Josiah, the little brother was around shortly, with his good mannered young charm. The father, Jerry, who had picked me up in their truck, wanted to hear all about the travels, and to tell how proud he was of the kids and their own adventures.

I got a quick shower and ate a late dinner at their table (mashed potatoes ribs, and veggies) being further introduced to the company. With a belly full and a plate finally emptied, one of Joel's friends came over and they wanted to smoke pipes. I was happy to join for a post-meal smoke. We went out all barefoot on asphalt with our pipes, tobacco, matches, and lighters to walk the streets in the yellow lamp lit dusk. We went into the neighborhood night, sharing all fashion of our traveling pasts, Joel telling of his times from beginning in Jordan, to the ancient mystic Petra, Israel and his brief stint in Paris in the end, with impromptu explorations and the chance fortunate acquaintances that travel necessarily introduces.

Next day was without much event, morning writing, then got out in the late afternoon, Joel treating me to a burrito, and then off to a bookstore for more writing and back for dinner. I'd gotten sunburned a couple of days before from riding with my shirt off too long in the unimpeded peak heat of summer solstice, so my back now looked like the swollen ripe inside of a watermelon, and all this rest time was greatly appreciated by me. That night it was back to the soft, quiet bed to sleep a long, dreamless, pristine sleep, meaning for morning departure being entirely rested and recomposed.

Awoke and had a breakfast, saying goodbye to everybody as they left off to their chores, except Teresa who was staying in for the day. I busied around the room gathering my things and tidying the bed. After getting my bags together, and pulling my bike to the living room to go, Teresa sat me down in the wooden chair for a final goodbye talk. She reclined beside me in a padded armchair with the yellow light from the lamp between us falling golden on her face. Noon light blazed behind from the patio's glass door, circling around her figure in a bright, radial, glowing blaze like Our Lady of Guadalupe as she squashes the serpent underfoot. She told me her story of a sullen, godless childhood and the revelations revealed to her in the time of need, imparting to me the root, the source, of all her eternal immortal joys, being all concerned about my afterlife, and reaching over to touch softly my arm as she discoursed. I took it all in quiet confidence, sitting enthralled, and listening about the myriad miracles, and angels, and tongues. When she'd finished the memoir she said to me, “Now I've fire-hosed you before you go on continuing your adventure.” I recognized the reverence in the story and was glad to hear, but in my mind I thought, “Am I the only one not so worried bout my soul?”

I thanked her for everything as she'd really given to me more deeply than I could ever have asked, and she said she was glad and hoped I had gained from it.

After a midsummer's ride north I was in Independence Iowa while a storm blew in, pattering rain falling down through the air, each bead refracting a late white sun against dark blue balloon clouds rolling from the east. A pickup truck pulled up by me while I was riding through a park looking to get out of the rains. A thin old guy smiling in its window, from a big wild beard, called out and motioned me over. He asked where I was from with a bike so packed and I told him my story in brief form. The building right by us was his repair shop, he said. He invited me in, pulled his truck around, lifted up the garage door from the entrance, and then he introduced himself to me as Hoskie. In this little town, home of all his life, he did tree trimming and stump removal, and all other various handyman tasks for all the folk. The side of his truck declared, “We get high legally!” in reference to the tree climbing.

“Like that? I thought it was a good one.” he laughed. I asked about the town and if he had any place to recommend for camping free since it was getting late. “If you're out on a ride and like to see interesting things, you know there's a whole clan of Amish people just north a-here, if you want to go out that way and make a quick stop for some sights.” I was interested and he said he could give a brief tour of the route to me via truck drive and then I'd know the way. He was incredibly amiable so I hopped in the passenger seat.

We pulled out along outside town dirt roads as the sun was lowering dangerously in the west meaning I'd have no time before full dark to ride here after the return drive. Throughout the drive Hoskie introduced me to the nuances of small town Independence life, talking about the locales we passed and inserting his dirty jokes and anecdotes from a bottomless supply. In courteous Midwestern manner, he'd lift up two fingers from the wheel to wave to every car going in the other lane.

He pulled out a menthol, lit it, and cranked his window down a crack. “Hafta watch for cops round here. They really got a stick in their ass, but I've gotten away with some crazy stuff. Oh, now here's a story for ya: I got drunk once and saw the chief's car was unlocked, so, naturally, I decided to take a little joyride in it before anybody'd caught up with me,” He took a drag off the cigarette, ashed out the window and chuckled with a grin, “I told 'em, 'I was just checkin to make sure it ran alright, guys.' They know me well, and somehow I got away with it without any trouble, too. Can you believe that?” I did believe him. Then seeing the town cemetery on the left, he pointed it out with habitual sarcasm, “Oh, everybody's just dying to get in there.”

We came to the Amish country road and then began retracing our path. On the right Hoskie saw a couple guys out front of a house who he knew, slowed, and pulled down their dirt drive. Sitting in the truck we each had a couple beers with the company of the two farmers, who were both already evening drunk. With flowing upward inflections punctuating every sentence in their native Iowan dialect, they exchanged their own dirty jokes and weekday current events among us. A little dog and kid pranced around each other in the front yard under the dimming dusk light, and the farmer's wife yelled out from the yellow-filled front window, “Supper's ready!” so we started out the driveway and back toward town again.

No light remained in the sky. Stepping out from the truck into the shop, Hoskie apparently recognized the predicament I was in and in a moment had invited me to follow down the street to his house for a grilled dinner with the family, which I did. I felt somewhat stuck and was anxious, still being bedless in a dark town unknown, but was grateful all the same for his hospitality. We sat in the living room after dinner watching TV, me tentatively resting my bones. His son Josh, who earlier I'd been introduced to cashiering at a gas station, stepped into the flickering light through the square door frame of the living room and asked if I wanted to stay the night at his place. Outside my own intention, the night's events flowed seamlessly from one to the next and I now had a couch for the night, all my restless worries instantly dissolving like tiny salt grains in a vast uncontrived, recalcitrant sea.

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Vivid Details

The Illinois plains were riddled with the spires and fires of the oil industry like some hostile, alien city. Refinery plants covered the soil in every direction. Above was a gray sky, the haze of the industry mixing with a sad troposphere. I pulled along with the cars, on down the road. Huge cylindrical tanks of the gasoline stood like sentries among networks of pipes and pyres, all of it set behind a high chain-link fence.

Figuring the way out, a way to escape finally from every last industrial remnant of the cities I'd thought were already left behind, was a convoluted labor. Streets meandered, waved and wound about without any obvious purpose. A couple outskirt towns passed by and, inevitably, from daily the westward push, every fragment of condensed civilization disappeared in the distance behind. Turning up ahead was the vast great stretch I'd been ready and set for mentally for days. Its first true pieces were there extrapolated before me.

The Midwest: that meager label we've given to such a tremendous expanse of domesticated prairie, a title too succinct and nondescript to accurately tell of any part of what it is beyond location. Contents and context, left by this name so obscured and undefined, leaves the actual idea of it open and empty, a space to be filled with a search and a discovery of intimacy with a place. A shallow and general impression of it can be gained easily enough from images of its endlessly repeating plants, all tucked away in columns and rows, but the specifics in between them keep more illusive. True understanding and appreciation of its details comes only from a simple desire to nakedly experience what beats through those hidden veins of our America's fertile cradle of a heart, the will to see the seeds of our society and how their deep and precious roots have grown. It is a vast land whose immensity lies in its breadth rather than a height and a climb. It is marginalized, all too often forgotten or ignored; the transition between the Eastern woods and Western dry. But that description, too, sells it short, defining it in relation to other things of only equal value, when it is something which is self-defined with a greatness of its own proclaimed in its every inch.

Now onset the far reaching ride through the land free of obstructions, filled only by open visibility to the long, flat circular horizon. A two-lane, sun faded, cracked up highway stretched out over the flat expanse, sided left and right with rank and file newborn corn sprouts, sucking fresh life from the sun who's pure face attended them maternally in her blue bonnet sky.

Every farm homestead was a consummate rural tableaux. Curving away from the county highway, wild grass grows in a thin margin between the two deep ruts, worn into packed dirt over the years by the truck which sits in front of a peeling, white garage. This maybe leans a bit to the left to match the barn which is propped up and fading into time in the far corner of the neatly mowed backyard. White lace curtains hang limp in the front window of the centerpiece white house. Its heavy wooden door (with an old brass knob in it that rattles just a little, but locks just fine) sits ajar in the heated day behind a loose screen to keep the houseflies out. A red tractor with tires just switched out for the new season and a baler hitched on back rests in front of the two squat grain silos at the house's west side. Inside them, a few tattered, stray corn ears remain from last year's harvest, hardened and dried through winter's freeze. The border fence of oaks and ashes bunches it all together and separates home from work - as best as possible, anyway.

At the evening end of another repeat day, my eyes searched about for camp, patiently at first, but with an earnestness that grew as the surrounding naked openness continued to hinder. For lack of cover, I couldn't find anywhere to settle and the light was dimming in the west. At the driveway of a house I stopped and looked around. A car and a truck sat resting before the garage. I pulled my bicycle halfway up the drive, laid it over to keep it visible from the doorway, and walked up to the house. When I came to the little porch and stairs I noticed two short, brown and black spotted gray dogs sleeping underneath it. The nearest to me awoke to the sound of my footsteps, blinked tiredly, then recognizing me, her little body began to erupt with violent barks. This startled her sister, who followed a similar progression into fitful barking. I quietly tried to talk them down and sooth them as they followed me around the house to the side door. I knocked on the metal frame of the screen. After a minute a man opened it up and, mostly ignoring the dogs, asked me what he could help me with.

I told him I was traveling a long distance and moved myself to the side so he could see my bike laying on its side in his driveway. “Normally I'd camp somewhere off in the woods, but in the Midwest, as you know, there's obviously not a lot of discrete places to do that. So I was wondering if it'd be possible for me to set up my tent somewhere in your yard for the night. I hadn't noticed that you had dogs, though,” I said as they continued to bark at my feet.

“I guess you don't like dogs around?”

“Oh, I don't mind them, it's just whether they mind me or not. I've noticed dogs don't usually like bikes.”

“They won't keep you up, so I wouldn't worry much about that. And yeah, I think that'd be alright with me.”

He had no preference for where I should put my tent and went back inside. A wire fence lined the yard, serving as a barrier between grass and corn fields. On the yard's southern side, a broad oak tree grew, with an old tire swing dangling down on a rope from a middle bough. I got all set up under this branch umbrella and put together my stove to cook the mac and cheese I'd got from a grocery in the last town. The dogs, once they'd seen me settle in, ceased their barking just like he'd said, and so they went back to their rest under the front stoop.

Six thirty and I awoke as the first thin, pale traces of light were streaming out from the eastern horizon onto the radial clouds. I wavered groggily inside my tent, with eyes half open, sitting up in my sleeping bag waiting for the bottom dregs of sleep to drain from my tired head.

Started boiling some water for cooking up breakfast and the first dog I'd met the night before snooped by, sniffing around my tent, with her muzzle sweeping the dewy grass. I dropped a brick of noodles into the pot to cook and the dog's ears suddenly perked, her head snapped upward with eyes intense toward the road, then she shot off. I looked over to see what she'd run off to. At a power pole's base she stopped her rush, planted her four paws out firm into the weeds, pointed eyes up and got to barking. A big old raccoon was fleeing quickly up the trunk and sat down on the cross beam upon reaching the top, its ring tail hanging off behind and mask eyes glaring down at the dog past its paws, as they gripped the beam. The dog's sister jumped up from under the stoop and came charging soon as she caught what happened, and rendezvoused in the ditch, joining in with her own vigorous barking like it was she who'd treed the raccoon. They went on like this for a bit over ten minutes.

Eventually they lost patience and went off wandering, but they each kept a keen eye on the power pole. I started lapping up breakfast. Once all had been clear for a while, the raccoon shimmied down the pole, face first. The dogs watched and then charged full speed onto it with all fury when it had reached the thick weeds at the bottom. They chased the raccoon around, fighting it back and forth in a circle with vicious growling and a flurry of snarls between them. It tried to retreat from the dogs back up the power pole, but one of the dogs jumped and caught its left hind leg in her teeth. She gripped tight and tore the raccoon down with all her weight while the other one went at its right side. Downed, biting, and clawing at the dogs, the raccoon tried up the pole again and got pulled off by whatever they could get grip of with their jaws. It tried once more and then got bit hard between its stomach and left hind leg by the more ferocious of the two dogs, but finally, laboriously, it broke free from the canine's teeth, and managed to climb outside their short reach. With a severe limp in the left leg, it slowly ascended the trunk to its perch at the pole top. Tired and defeated it stayed there this time even after the dogs had left. The raccoon's energy flagged entirely, its motions ceased and it no longer breathed. It remained, still at the top of the power pole and I went off for my morning ride with an excitement and a slight tinge of homesickness wisping away.