Driving I-95 South. Baptized without God.

~ Live & Learn

5:33 am. Friday morning.

Google Maps signals 17 minutes to destination. Smooth ride, cruising down I-95 South. Truckers, insomniacs, and DK listening to Audible, his book on tape. More Terry Tempest Williams, her new book, Erosion: Essays of Undoing.  Terry’s way in my head, and beyond, and yes, we’re on a first name basis now. “Our undoing is also our becoming. I have come to believe this is a good thing.”

The Heads-up Display on the windshield flashes alert: Object ahead on highway. It flashes an alert again. I tap the brakes.

A wind gust blows leaves across three lanes. I exhale.  Wonders of technology. Car warns you about objects on highway, or if you veer outside your lane. I’m listening to books on tape, beamed from the cloud. GPS tells me how long to the office. And I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

The car wobbles over uneven pavement. 4000 pounds of car, wearing grooves into the asphalt, with my back and forth 4-5 days a week.

Read somewhere from a survey that 85% of us wished to travel more.  And that one in 10 Americans surveyed say they have no interest in going anywhere.  Welcome readers, to Me, I’m on top of this stack of 10.

Terry continues narrating her book, and my mind drifts in and out of her soothing cadence.  And an aha moment lights it up for me. Why I so love being in the top 0.01% of this 10%. Why travel is not for me, with its long security lines, dirty restrooms, crowded cabins, delays on tarmacs, waiting for luggage and snarly traffic to and from and at tourist hotspots.  Why camping out right here, immersed in my head, and swept away in my thoughts, to anyplace, anywhere, at anytime, is still the most wonderful road trip of all.

Here, Great Salt Lake is a vast mirror of water. A shin-high line of sea foam forms a gateway to the silky pink waters so shallow that the salt reefs are visible like white coral. I shed my clothes and enter the body of Great Salt Lake. I walk in water knee-deep and warm until gradually, maybe half a mile out, the lake reaches my chin. I lean forward and surrender to the depths and allow myself to be held by Great Salt Lake, buoyed by this body of water that I have loved all my life. I float on my back, gazing up at the sky in the most joyous state, bliss married to awe. I am of this place. My body and the body of this lake are one. I have surpassed my mother’s age when she died. I am approaching my grandmother’s age when she mentored me in birds. Great Salt Lake continues to show me the cyclical nature of things. And yet always there is the paradox. Although much has changed in this octave of time between flood and drought, the essence of the land and my own essence remain the same. Without thought, I baptize myself by the authority vested in me, not God, not the patriarchy, with only the lake as my witness. My immersion is complete.

And my immersion is complete. I’ve never actually visited the Great Salt Lake, and yet I have, in its most pristine state, courtesy of Terry Tempest Williams. Walking in warm, salt water until it reaches my chin. Then floating on my back gazing at the sky.

So, yes, I’m perfectly damn content occupying this 50 square mile radius around Home, where I exist most of my seven days a week.

Travel? You can have it.

My mind may be a treacherous neighborhood, but Dear God, grant me a week, made up of seven, consecutive Saturday mornings.

At home.

In my Head.

Never Alone.

And always ready…

to travel wherever this Mind wishes to take me next.

Photo: Great Salt Lake by Tucapel

73 thoughts on “Driving I-95 South. Baptized without God.”

    2. I read all the time, anywhere — on my stoop, in a noisy cafe, at night in my tour bus bunk,” Smith said in her recent By the Book interview. “The external circumstance is not the key, it’s the book itself. I’m like Gumby; I enter the world of a book and temporarily live there, shutting all else out.

      ~ Ken Tucker, Patti Smith Plumbs Her Dreams in ‘Year of the Monkey’ (NY Times, September, 24, 2019)

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    3. You’ve inspired me Jim.

      “Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.”

      – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind (Penguin Books, January 25, 2005)

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      1. Hi, David. I have to admit your dislike of travel shocked me. Given all the wonderful posts you’ve written over the years that involved traveling/commuting, it seems that such experiences inspired you. Maybe it’s the commuting you don’t like, but perhaps once you arrive the chance to explore new destinations would be like a week of Saturday mornings.

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      1. Smiling…

        Layla’s close friend’s family just moved to Chicago from New York, from France a couple years earlier. One is a celebrity chef, the other a baker. The baker is always saying she can’t find real flour to bake with here, in her beautiful French accent.

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  4. Time alone, so misunderstood are “quiet” people. Either thought to be depressed or obnoxious. I’m rarely lonely, often misunderstood. My father was this way, now my son. People thought my father was tortured and unable (he was an alcoholic, either sullen or violent) and now my intellect son, so quiet. I wish I’d had more conversations with my father, thank God I get to understand my son, don’t push so hard to have him tell me, just watch as he is learning to be himself. Different, quiet. (Apologies for the long comment. You’ve just clarified for me that my son is good.)

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    2. Lisa Anne; this is the ONE place where you can be as long or as short as you like. I should know as I’m monopolizing Dave’s blog all the time and he hasn’t complained once (yet!) 😉
      And isn’t it great that you just realised that your son is good! This is the best comment in my eyes…

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  7. Wonderful post, David. Admittedly, I enjoy the destination way more than the journey. The journey, with all its hassles, restrictions and borders, can be overrated. Unless you have a good book in hand, that is. Happy Saturday at home!

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  8. Hmm.. does listening to a book’s audiotape stop one from swearing at crazy drivers and/or from wondering almost every time if they got the memo on intersections?

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  11. It’s funny. I love to travel. The journey there becomes a thing of the past once I’ve reached said destination. It’s all in how you look at it, I say. If you bitch and complain, you will attract issues. We had a crazy problem once coming back from a cruise. My husband and older son were beside themselves. I just went with it. Not like I had any control over the situation! I don’t know where this zen-ness has come from, to be honest. Was not always so!

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  12. Oh I’m with you about travel! But it’s definitely not being in my head or my Crazy thoughts! My favorite place to be is in nature. 💚 The sway of the trees, the wind gently moving across my face and how it reveals again and again the silence in me. Thats heaven for me 😊

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    1. This is the bleached-bone veritas of the Colorado Plateau. We stand on the edge of an erosional landscape looking out. The curvature of the Earth becomes our home range. The silence before us is time. We feel how small we are in the embrace of geologic relief… Watching light captured and held within the pastel pinnacles of Bryce Canyon in shades of pink, orange, and yellow—all these weathered places show us we are merely humans, soft, humble, and temporary.

      ~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)

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      2. We ventured through the Great vastness of the beautiful West, in a small Gold Toyota Corrolla , I bought the car new when I was a teenager, it had 11 miles on it! no A/C, a tiny 3K engine, totally sticky vinyl interior,No radio! I used a Sony AM/FM table radio (purchased when I was 13 still have it) about 10″ by 8″ positioned on the floor behind the drivers seat tune to KINK-FM, 102 Portland… Then when I had enough money saved I had installed an after market Jensen or Pioneer AM/FM, cassette tape deck with Harman Kardon speakers…My neighbors who had a soft spot for me, when they learned I had a cassette deck they bought me my 1st cassette, Foreigner ‘s “Double Vision” album tape a few days before it released! (they were music vendors) One song was titled “Hot Blooded” which I blasted as I drove when I stopped at a light I’d turn it down wouldn’t want to draw attention or think that someone would think I thought I was “Hot Blooded”. I agree with Terry Tempest Williams Bryce Canyon is so pretty! We took a long trip through Utah and visited the “7” Unforgettable Parks…then into Arizona to stand with our eyes staring in awe, mouths forming the words do you believe this grandeur,, taking in those gifts of breaths on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.. Music playing, on the installed radio & cassette desk, winding blowing my long hair…carefree, out on the open road…just the two of us on an adventure, out West…on a memory making, Classic Road Trip!!! /// Car themed day we are watching Ford vrs Ferrari

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  13. I’m with you pal (albeit late – we lost connectivity for two days which has been very strange)…though I wonder if it’s not because I traveled so much and now enjoy the tether that keeps me en route while still at home

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  14. As much as I love to travel, I love to come home even more … and, even better, have a few days to just plunk down, simmer my soups, read my books, answer my own questions and just be.

    Thought-provoking post, as always!

    MJ

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  15. Yes, yes, I, too have concluded that I’m no fan of travel. It’s just no fun anymore, with all the lines and TSA and the crowds and the horrible food in airports and no food on the plane, even bad food. Long flights, long lines, less room in seats. And don’t get me started on driving state through state through state … but how else to stay in touch with those we love? 🤯 I love Terry Tempest Williams, by the way; interviewed her years ago, face-to-face. Good energy, that one.

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        3. Bela; I’ve hardly returned safely from abroad and already I’m adding podcas and interview to read on my computer. Dave’s knowing too many really good people whom I’d like to know more about…. Thank You.

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  16. Don’t feel like commenting now – after a long, long day of travelling…. But I have great news too: My Eleanor and her elephant arrived while I was away – might have to add a few more hours to my 24h of today! 🙂

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  18. Your Mind is the uber-traveller. You are the mental equivalent of the guy who just topped the last of the 7 highest peaks in the world in 6 months (previous record 8 years). No need for you to waste time in flying tin cans, DP. Keep on trekking across the literary and cultural plateaux!

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  19. If my memory serves me well -you’ve flown over 2 million miles? So one can understand you not liking the transportation end of travel…we go on epic car trips…I remember that twice in your previous shares you had a gif photo of some folks on the open road, she, careful in the front passenger seat had wavy hair (probably ‘red hair” though hard to tell the gif in black & white) love the gif photo! You’ve missed I think two years of no Easter in Miami? You and Susan have traveled with your children…enjoying the family time and you’ve instilled in them the wanderlust of travel…which is a very enriching opportunity…they’ve grown by expansion of their minds being introduced to new cultures and opportunities…I’m a homebody…my needs are simple and I am content, so I understand the cozy factor! I do know that you don’t like the interruption when you are home of the Leaf Blowers Noise in the neighborhood.

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