The Loneliest Liberal: In above under out yonder

By James Knudsen

A close acquaintance recently offered the following. “Life’s roads are often difficult, but there’s always a map to take us in a new direction.”
    Given that I was born under the sign of Pisces, one might expect the water of the oceans to be the place I go to chart adventures or a new path. I suspect geography is playing a larger role than astrology in this case, because born in California’s Central Valley, with its dry, open expanses, 140 miles from the nearest ocean, has anchored me to the land with greater force than being born under the sign of water-bound Pisces. And so it’s roads and not oceans, seas, or rivers that have borne me on my memorable travels.

I took my first solo road trip at age 14. I’ll spare the details. Suffice it to say that the trip wasn’t sanctioned by any adult. At 15, I shared the driving with Dad as we drove to a French teacher’s convention in Quebec City, Canada. The convention concluded, we drove west across Canada to Vancouver Island and finally down through Washington and Oregon, back to California. Some other accompanied trips have included a night ride from Los Angeles to Tulare that began near midnight because…well, because you can do that when you’re 20. And you can do something like that at 30, when what you intended to be a day trip into the hills of Kern County becomes an overnight trip up Old Highway 395 and you discover that the nearest lodging that allows pets is in Tahoe, so you keep driving. And sometimes you keep driving because that’s what you’ve always done. So you do, until you can’t.
    Accompanied road trips have their rewards, but my recent drives have been solo. A trip to Sequoia National Park prompted the purchase of an annual pass, which prompted a day trip to Death Valley a few days later in an attempt to amortize the cost of the annual pass. Death Valley is a good deal farther, and I drove most of the return leg at night. Trying to maintain a good pace while negotiating the turns of Highway 178 as it heads west towards Bakersfield works better than caffeine. Many national parks remain unvisited, so that’s an option. As are the places I learned of and made a mental note to see, but haven’t yet.
    Gee’s Bend, Alabama, tops that list. A 1999 Los Angeles Times article piqued my interest and I’ve often wondered what it would be like to make the drive into that isolated peninsula on the Alabama River, perhaps to be greeted with puzzled looks from locals wondering why this person has come to see this place? And then to head north to New England to find, if it can be found, the farm my great-grandfather worked as an immigrant.
    And what of those points on the map that are not unknown, but may with time become so? Is it best to keep the memory unaltered? New maps, new directions, new memories, there’s still tread on the tires. Are there empty pages left in the travel diary? I’ll let you know when I find out.

Copyright © 2019 by James Knudsen