Step 3: Unpack and Reflect

In the days before this trip, we mapped out our plan on a wall sheet that hung in the kitchen. This morning, we move into Step 3 - Unpack and reflect.

Rich: Home At Last

I often drove alone - or alone with thoughts. At times, there were none. Gripping the wheel of a 26-foot moving truck, buffeted by winds and scoffed by semi’s forces a certain focus.

But Teddy Roosevelt hopped on board from the grassy lands of Dakota. And that conversation was nostalgic, timely, and persists:

• I was reminded to keep living a life of purpose, to be courageous in thoughts, ambitions, and the pursuit of justice.
• I heard testimony that recovery from deep trauma takes work, but is possible and worth it.
• The importance of finding and seeing beauty echoed - in nature and in relationships, to restore and sustain full health.

And all of this reminded me of my Roosevelt ‘relationship’, meeting and beginning my love with Laura Goble in our shared work in Portland. It has been an invigorating journey, with both spectacular vistas and a number of sharp, dangerous curves.

Today - as earlier in our relationship - I remember Laura’s important advice: Don’t forget to pause, slow - and celebrate the victories, even small ones along the way.

I woke in my hometown today, and chose to celebrate a little bit - even if briefly - before turning to the ominous to-do lists still ahead. I celebrate one finish line with a little jig on Main Street and a refreshed spirit in a place we choose to call ‘home’.

Laura: Home Reimagined 
In my adult life I've lived on Boston's North Shore, the shores of Lake Tanganika in East Africa, the shores of Lake Erie in Buffalo, in the prairies of Chicagoland, among the mountains, rivers and pines of Portland, OR, the shores of Erie, PA, at the confluence of river and lake in Ashtabula, OH and now back among the rivers, mountains and pines in Milwaukie, OR. Along the road, the road that wound through all those Places and now to this Place, I thought a lot about what Home means.

In some ways, Home is about Place. It's also about People. It's also about Self. Home is about belonging and connection and safety. It's about love of Place, of People, of Self. Moving 17 times in the past 20 years has taught me that Home has to be flexible, able to be carried with you. Home is transcendent - something mystical, spiritual, deeply rooted and always open. Home is honestly seeing, hearing, knowing, embracing and caring for Rich, Sara, and Jacob. Home is honestly seeing, hearing, knowing, embracing and caring for People, for Place, for Self wherever, whoever and however they might be.

In Milwaukie, OR today - This is home. We are Home. I am Home.

Knowing that we were going to redefine home this summer, my mom added this "Home Sweet Home" candle to last December's birthday package. I tucked it away in an accessible place so we could warm our new Home with it upon arrival.

On the brink of home...

Yesterday's drive from Fort Peck to Helena, Montana felt like a gateway to home. In the morning, we attempted to enjoy the quirkiness of Fort Peck - a temporary town put up to house workers building the dam in 1933. At this point, it seems to be...well...temporary permanently. The walk was tough though - mosquitoes on the offensive in mass quantities! We did manage to check out the Fort Peck Theater in town. It happened to be their 50th reunion weekend. The night before, we enjoyed meeting some of the original cast and director. They so freely shared their stories and reflections about how live theater unites people and communities. The trip to Fort Peck was worth it because of these special people - and homemade cinnamon rolls in the morning.

On the road, the great open grasslands began to rise and fall with hills, ridges and soon purple mountain majesty - a few peaks still had veins of snow at their summit. We started to feel the Pacific Northwest upon us. Storms rolled in the distance.

On the heels of a cleansing rain storm the night before, Mount Helena beckoned this morning.  We woke as the sun was evaporating valley dew and climbed to a vista above the city.  Our breathing got heavy very quickly, and not just because of the view.  We were reminded of another profound difference between East and West: the varying definition of 'mountain'.  We'll need to do some work to get back in Western Mountain climbing shape. We'll pack up the car now and head towards Washington State.

Stop and Smell the Sagebrush

We planned for just a few hours of driving on day five so we could spend most of the day in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. For Rich and Laura - this was like a sacred pilgrimage important to travel with our children.

Theodore Roosevelt credits the badlands in North Dakota for personal healing and, later, for deepening his understanding of nature and a full appreciation for the value of its preservation. While many crossing the country will bee line to Yellowstone, we were drawn to here. Named as "Mako Shika" or "no good land" by the Sioux, perhaps in an ironic ploy to steer settlers away from a place of nothingness, the badlands spoke to us as they did to Roosevelt:

“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm."

Laura and Rich - now joined by Jacob and Sara - are on a journey that connects to this place. We met in service to community at Roosevelt High School, doing what we could, with the simple gifts we had, where we were. We stumbled into love, contracted into marriage, and - as we grow - we now are falling in love in many new and different ways. We changed where we were for a while, finding new places to share our time and earnest talents in community. We are most alive in conversation and working alongside others doing the same - in Erie, Ashtabula, and now a list that grows steadily.

We were and are a family of people who have known trauma and are working toward healing, individually and collectively. Nature soothes us, inspires us - and we rally for its protections when and where we can.

At some points in the park, particularly in the most barren landscapes of the badlands, Rich and Laura both felt deep desolation. We drove the winding road with an awareness of how humans have annihilated the bison and wild horse herds for a cattle industry that feeds an unsustainable American diet and accelerates climate change. We carried knowledge that people indigenous to this land were marginalized, oppressed, deculturated and lied to for the gain of white immigrants. It was almost too much to hold. Then, we turn to the peace of wild things, a la Wendell Berry, for consolation, inspiration and renewed resolve.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

These photos can only begin to capture what is in our hearts - giggling at prairie dogs, bison roaming up steep grasslands and down winding roads, the smell of sage in the air, hoodoos and rock formations of all shapes and sizes. How about this spontaneous encounter?

Today, we sit in bentwood rockers on the porch of a CCC era lodge, our loving Shepweilador nearby. Our week long meandering journey is coming to a close, and we know the pace and pressures will build again soon. So, we draw in reflections from our sublime day at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, converting it to inspiration we’ll carry with us into Oregon

North Dakota - Check!

One of the reasons "we" chose the northern route to Oregon was so Laura could check off visiting her 48th state - North Dakota (only New Mexico and Colorado left now). As we drove from Minnesota through North Dakota toward Theodore Roosevelt National Park, prairie lands turned to rolling hills and comical towering buttes. We landed in Dickinson, North Dakota for the night. Today we'll take it easy to explore the Badlands, and look for wild horses, bison and prairie dogs before heading on to Fort Peck, Montana.

Last of the Great Lakes: Superior

From the truck:
Day 3
Dear Diary:
We’re in this rig together for the long haul.  Nothing opens up the heart in thought and conversation quite like highway miles with friends on the bench seat of a big truck. Mars, however, never really opened up.  He power napped.
Wagons Ho!

From the car:
Meanwhile in the Highlander, Sara and Laura played a very successful round of alphabet road signs. We made it all the way to "Z" before our lunch stop. We were almost to Duluth before Sara finally spotted that elusive Z! The journey through Wisconsin was bordered by farmland and wildflower prairie. Further North, the land began to bubble up into rolling hills and pine trees.

 

From Duluth:
As we arrived in Duluth, Rich's mom shared a little family history with this part of the country via email.

"Wisconsin-where Snyder's [her paternal family line] settled in about 1840's. Central Wisconsin. My grandma and grandpa were married there, then moved to Duluth. My grandpa had tuberculosis and was in a sanitarium just north of Duluth and is buried in Duluth. Ray and I drove there on our motorcycle on one trip. My dad was born in Duluth in 1910. They lived right on the river edge part of the time in a tent when his dad had tb. They moved to Oregon in 1918. It would be fun to be with you."

We carry her and this history with us as we soak up the magnitude of the last of the Great Lakes on our winding road. Lake Superior is comparable to Austria in surface area. The Ojibwe name for her is gichi-gami, meaning "great sea." Being near her, you understand why.

High Road (Laura, Jacob, Sara, Siri and Pipsqueak)

So much of our planning before we hit the road was about the move, not about the road trip. We focused on the essentials of getting ready to leave, then trusted we could figure out the rest along the way. We knew we wanted to drive the longer, more beautiful northern route through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota rather than the shorter route through Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Once the moving truck was packed, we drove west just a couple of hours and exhaled that we made it on the road. Day two revealed both how tired we were, how loosely we'd planned and how technology can fail you. Poor Rich ended up on a route full of construction, traffic and nothing that interesting. It left him with a lot of time to be with himself and his faithful dog, but missing out on the magic we'd envisioned for our winding road to Oregon.

Meanwhile, the other wagon in our train had a very different journey. We started with a goodbye wave to Lake Erie near Monroe, MI, then made our way north for a lunch stop and to meet Lake Huron at Bay City State Park. That's when we realized Rich's GPS had malfunctioned and sent him in the opposite direction. By some miracle, we all kept our cool and made a plan to reconvene in Wisconsin.

At first, we were going to attempt to shorten our separation-from-Rich time with a ferry ride across Lake Michigan, but our slow meandering and hard rain made it impossible to make the ferry schedule work. We headed north instead, sticking to plan A, with no regrets. The beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, even in the clouds and rain, was soul-stirring, even to Siri!

The hospitality of its people - like Wayne and Laura of Moofinfries in Naubinway, MI - was unmatchable. We barely made it to a gas station before running out of fuel - both for our car and our bodies. Late night on a Monday in early season isn't a great time to find food in the midst of UP wilderness. We stumbled into a miracle by finding Moofinfries (local ice cream and Wayne's brother's farm-raised beef is the Moo, fish from Lake Michigan is the fin, rounded out by the most delicious fresh cut fries you've ever had). They'd only been open a few weeks and have big dreams. Wayne, a welder by trade, lost his arm six years ago when hit by a semi-truck after stopping to help a disabled vehicle. After healing, he tried to go back to welding, but said he didn't feel "productive" so with his teacher wife, Laura, they dreamed up the restaurant. We can't recommend this stop enough if you happen to be driving Rte. 2 someday. Try the Michigan pothole ice cream and definitely order a large fries. YUM!

Today, we decided to finish our Great Lakes tour by heading to Duluth, MN. From there we'll stay in Dickinson, ND and head to Teddy Roosevelt National Park, to Fort Peck for the night. Friday, we'll head to Glacier National Park, hopefully stay in Polebridge, MT. Saturday to Spokane. Sunday to Milwaukie, OR. Whew - we have a plan.

Low Road (Rich and Mars)

Dear Diary:
Day 2 - Accidentally separated from my wife and kids at a fork in the Oregon Trail.  They took the Northern route.  My trusty best friend, a handful of mayflies and I took what seemed - at times - the Donner road.  And it was no party.
We labored through rough, under-constructed roads, rush hour Windy City traffic, and the monotony of shallow conversations.  We ate what we could find in the corners of our prairie schooner.  When things got lean, Mars gazed at me as protein - and I at him.
Thunderstorms proved a blessing, as a snowstorm would have likely doomed us as a macabre legend.
Instead, a storybook reunion with our party in the land of cheeseheads and my childhood dreams - Green Bay WI, with the morning sun bathing Lambeau on the Western horizon.

Regrets to miss a connection with my Pioneer shooting guard soul mate David ‘Boo’ Peake and his partner Jackie.  But thankful to be alive and moving the wagon train yet forward to Oregon.