The Blog is Back: A few reflections on driving across America

Here are a few final images from our last week in Bellingham.  A walk around Lake Padden. Last Sunset from balcony and one of many scenes from the long drive home.  Apparently, we left just as the Fall rainy season started in earnest. So  good timing. 

I've been meaning to start back with daily blogging for awhile now. Definitely feeling the pull, but have not recommitted.  I think when I enjoyed blogging the most was during the days of  going through the various levels of Iyengar Assessment and attending numerous workshops and writing about them and yoga philosophy more generally.  I am not so intensely into that aspect of Iyengarland these days, so I've been thinking about what I want to write about.  

Well,  life being what it is, and political life being what it is, a new guiding thread has emerged. Surviving a new world order.  Its a difficult thing we are all going through together. 

I have several posts forming in my mind.  One is about the drives there and back through the heart of  Trumplandia, oh wait, that's Amercia.  

Another is about Ahimsa and the Benediction I posted yesterday.   

Another is about 52 percent of white female voters.   I am wearing my Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again shirt today.  The server at Taco Deli told me he liked my shirt and I told him I liked his blue eyeshadow.  It was very sparkly.   

I think I'll just take them in that order.   

1. Driving Across America. 

I've read a few books in the past months that deal, directly or indirectly, with the Dust Bowl and corresponding responses to that devastating time in our country.   First, I read Daniel Brown's, The Boys in the Boat.  People traveling west looking for work was only tangentially part of the main character's story, but  he had to travel to find work also and dealing with the corresponding poverty and food shortage was a big part of what motivated him to row.   Then, I read Four Winds by Kristen Hannah, which is about the devastation of the Dustbowl in and around Dalhart Texas (which we have driven through many a time on our own cross country journeys to Colorado).  Back in the day before the dust bowl, it was quite the thriving metropolis.   She and her children finally leave Texas for  California and face a harrowing journey with many dangers in addition to a less than warm welcome when they arrive in California.  I also read Lynda Rutlege's   West with Giraffes, which like  Boys in the Boat  tangentially deals with the  consequences of the Dustbowl and a desire to make it to California.  In this case, the main character helps drive two Giraffes who are headed to the  San Diego Zoo.  There really were two giraffes who made the journey after surviving a hurricane like storm at sea on their way from Africa (A companion hippo) did not survive.  

Anyway,  what struck me about all of these books is the extreme difficulty of  getting from one place to another  before there was a national highway system in place.  

Now we have a highway system,  but big roads don't cover everything  and even still  you face a lot of dangers driving from Austin to Bellingham and back.   First, the weather can be brutal.  On the way up, we were dealing with July heat which was potentially life threatening if something had happened to the car.  On the way back, we dodged a very large snow storm and deal twith several places of high winds.  Second,  there's deciding  how far you can realistically make it in a day and finding a good place to stop.  Albeit, there are more options  than there were 80-90 years ago, but still there are quite a few places that we didn't feel totally safe stopping.  Third, there's the traffic to get through in the  bigger cities like  Boise and  SLC and its exurban sprawl.   Fourth, there are all the Trump signs which was an early prognosticator that things might well not go the way  I wanted them to politically.  

At the same time, much of the land is really beautiful and on the way back we saw Arches National Park which alone was probably worth the effort.    Between the spaces of  beauty, there's also just  A LOT of empty space.  We listen to music, but a lot of the time  driving and navigating is a two person job.  Everything was harder on Guthrie because he wouldn't lie down for the whole trip.  

Tomorrow:  Ahimsa and  Benediction.