This Digital Potlatch presentation is the last in the four-part series of GRACK! columns dealing with my first trip to Iowa to visit my wife after she’d moved to Dubuque. It would be a long time before we were living under the same roof again, and this final episode of the trip sets the stage. If you’d like to catch up on the first three episodes, just go here and look for Parts I-III.
This is an exact reproduction of a Web column published almost five years ago, photos included. It’s a little long, about 1400 words, so I’ve split it in the middle. (Be sure to click through to see all the pictures.) When the original page loaded, you heard a raven’s call. With these posts, the sound is optional but recommended.
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Run to Ground, Part IV
I‘d had enough of leaving, but what else was there for me to do?
No way could I stay there in the little house on Harvard Street, nor was there any plan to do so. Dubuque was hers as long as that would last, and I had business in New Mexico. I loved her more for seeing how she’d made a space to live her life, I realized: she didn’t know it, but the air around her crackled with excitement, and everywhere she went she made a difference. It had always been that way with her. There were hardly any birds on Harvard Street before she came, and the flowers that she planted seemed to grow up brighter and smell stronger than the rest.
We said goodbye before the dawn, and she drove off first to walk her absent sister’s dog. How typical, I thought, as I finished loading up the truck. There was something very intimate and poignant about being in her house alone one last time, and I carefully wiped up the tracks from my wet shoes before I shut the door behind me. It was barely light now, and the air was filled with mist.
As I rumbled off toward Waterloo, the morning sun finally burned down through the clouds, and the world was new again. Grain elevators and church steeples came to life on the horizon. The towns were small and lonely, though, with nothing in between but straight flat roads and local jabber on the radio. I passed some people on their way to work and felt that subtle bittersweet sensation traveling always brings on road trips. To shake it off, I spontaneously decided on a slightly different route.This one ran parallel to how I’d come before, but 15-20 miles to the south. I’d still come out at Onawa and cross the Missouri at Decatur, but along the way I’d see all new ground.
What a difference an innocent change of plans can make, though. And in this case, central Iowa came out worse for my having shifted. The counties along this stretch were almost shabby in comparison to those I’d seen before, hit hard by the loss of family farms, perhaps. After missing turns in villages too poor or numbed to put up road signs, I realized the highway always goes down “Main Street,” even if it looks like no one’s home. Soon the clouds had closed back in again. A steady drizzle kept me busy with the wiper switch, the intermittent setting having long ago expired, just like the reasons for the places I was passing through. Somewhere in the middle of the state, I crossed Interstate 35. Less than 40 minutes south were gleaming suburbs where people dawdled over laptops at the coffeeshop at Borders. Neither extreme had anything to do with me, however, and on I drove.
I’d picked the alternate route to take me to the little western Iowa town of Soldier, just because I liked the name. There was a river, too, and diagonal roads marked on the map that meant there must be hills and valleys. Before I got there, I had to go through Carroll, where my wife was born, which brought forth enlightenment of a very different sort: if you want to see what “prosperity” and strip malls do for towns that once had charm, just go to Carroll. After a dozen red lights, I stopped counting. The one I love was born where black dirt nurtured promise in the spring, not waiting for the light to change at Burger King. I wondered if I would ever need to go back there again.
30 minutes farther west, however, I knew why I had come this way. From the Soldier River up to Turin was a joy: the winding road went through one gorgeous little valley after another, and every farmhouse seemed to have a pond and nearby stretch of woods. It simply felt good there, and I decided that topograpy was key: where the lay of the land precluded carving out its spirit, there the spirit remained. The earth has things to tell us, it’s as simple as that. Why this eludes so many, I’ll never know: to me it seems as obvious as bloodying my nose against a door.
On and on I drove. By the middle of the afternoon, in lengthening late October shadows, I was in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. Here too landscape had largely defeated the plow, and there was something sadly almost alien about the unspoiled prairie rivers and surrounding grassy hills. (Think about that for a moment, then say a prayer for the heart of man.) Just at sunset, I saw a flock of wild turkeys leave a cornfield. While still absorbing that, I came around a bend and nearly ran into a herd of dairy cows. A farmer in a pickup truck was moving them across the road, but the animals were balking, and as I sat there waiting, a few came back the other way. With that, the driver rolled his window down and bellowed something along the lines of “HeeYAAWWWgitgitWHOOP!” — causing every last cow to jump and clear the road in seconds flat. I gave a long, slow, cowboy wave and proceeded on my way.
Making it from Dubuque to Ogallala after over 13 hours on the road was a relief, but I can honestly say I wasn’t tired. Those of you who know this country will realize I went all the way across Iowa and Nebraska without ever using the Interstate. In western Nebraska, at least, this is just as fast as superhighway travel. (There may be fewer people per square mile in this Rand McNally “white space” territory than in northern New Mexico, and that is something worthy of one’s notice.)
The next day I woke up with just half an hour to get to breakfast at the Best Western Stagecoach Inn, but I needn’t have hurried: reflecting more the times than traditional prairie hospitality, early risers had consumed the allotted waffles, yogurt, cereal, fruit salad, and orange juice, and management had no intention of blessing my departure with a full stomach. Nebraska dropped a notch or two in my estimation as a result, but the McDonald’s sausage and egg biscuit got me into Colorado, and from there the inner tempo picked up quite considerably.
Returning to el Norte was more than just a scenic jolt. After miles and miles of prairie, the first view of actual snow-capped mountains was like ascending into another realm. As soon as I was locked into the Rockies in Huerfano County, all the fight went out of me. Mesmerized, I pulled off the road beside the Spanish Peaks and washed a chicken sandwich down with apple juice while weekend traffic whistled up La Veta Pass. For those few moments, all the world was right. Nothing in my life was settled, as if it ever would be, but there I was with splendor all around me. No malls or suburbs, no lonely little towns with bad cafes, no church, no Interstate, no equity, no wife, no anything really, except a 17-year-old truck and bread crumbs on my vest. That, and air so clean it scared my lungs.
A week later on another Sunday afternoon, I walked up on the mesa behind my house to stretch my legs and look for potsherds. It was cold, and there was just a gentle wind. Mood-wise, I was something less than solid, with a nip of hungry ghost around the edges. As I scrambled down a small arroyo, I spied a scrap of ancient pottery lying in the sun on the opposite slope. The air was still beside the sheltering piñons, and I could feel the heat of the sun radiating from the surface of the dry, red-brown dirt.
Without knowing how or why, I dropped down on my knees (instead of bending over) to retrieve the potsherd. The ground was soft and soothing where my legs were pressed against it, and I suddenly relaxed to let my upper body settle down as well. For several minutes I just lay there with my torso on the warm brown hillside, raised up slightly on my forearms, and didn’t want to move. When I did get up, I felt as if I knew a secret.
May the circle be unbroken, truly — only in the here and now.
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