Continuation of 8 Sept. 2010
the nothingness on the plain will test the weariest of wanderer
… And in my horizon is nothing but west, as I cross the Wisconsin tree-filled tundra, a plethora of picturesque country houses dotting sparsely the jagged bluff and wheat field landscape. No more retrograde stops until Montana. In desertion of all things topographic, I batter these simple plains with lethargic hours of ‘skyscoping.’ Searching for foreign cloud formations in this far away land, I chatter aimlessly into my camera trying to make sense of driving 8,000 miles.
I-94, to St. Paul, Minnesota
I-35 to Albert Lee
I-90 to Blue Earth,
H-71 to Iowa, to cross her off the list...Spirit Lake, Okoboji, … this is the place so many mistake ‘Idaho’ for?
I waste no hour of daylight and stop only for gas. Did I miss something? What was that? I didn’t see it sneak up on me, but my chatter has turned to paranoia. This vacant land cannot be real. I yearn for the mountains of my birth. These flatlands intimidate my Rocky Mountain heart with an immensity in which one cannot perceive; a mathematical anomaly, a land with no horizontal limit. My mind wanders to questions of significance. The most dangerous of the alone and those clouds, look how they tower, grey and ominous. Is that a tornado? This is not my land. This is not my familiar friend. These states are too big for me. What am I doing? A panic… flee… go back West. What were you thinking? Questioning.
I sleep in the car for the first time. I found no friends on the Iowan plains. No hill, no valley, nothing in sight. I searched for camp grounds near Spirit Lake, but in torrential rain and pitch darkness I could not make out the signs. After 14 hours of driving a parking lot will suffice. Backed up against a chain-link fence, they’ll have to come at me from the front if they want to take me. I’ll see them coming. Perhaps my luck will have me avoid any officer’s gaze at my expired tags, and now I try to dream the rain away. To dream this nightmare away.
.s.
