An Unfamiliar Place

I wake up in the back seat of my car and open the door with my toes.  I’m brushing my teeth in a rest stop parking lot in Astoria, Oregon when I see an otter bob and then disappear into the water.  I eat a granola bar for breakfast, and then Erin and I backtrack to Fort Clatsop so I can satisfy my desire to visit the western terminus of Lewis and Clark’s voyage beyond the newly purchased Louisiana Territory.  Meriwether Lewis began his journey on the Ohio River in Pittsburgh before venturing into unknown lands in which Thomas Jefferson believed there would be dinosaurs.

 

I envy historical figures for their opportunities to make new discoveries, for there were many more blank spaces to be filled back then.  People my age have to get creative to be the first person to document a new area without having to operate a rocket ship or a submarine or somehow arrange a flight to Antarctica.  After reading a sizeable portion of Undaunted Courage, the story of Lewis and Clarke’s epic canoe trip across a vast empire, I am ashamed to remember all the times I used GoogleMaps to direct me to the nearest grocery store.  I briefly retrace the path of Lewis and Clarke as they dragged their canoes ashore.  If I could only experience the joy the men felt when they first lay eyes on the Pacific Ocean, then I shall have found my calling.  Until then we row on with practiced movements and only a vague idea where we are going.

Onward to a gas station in a suburb of Portland where an attendant with a purple rash that covers his cheeks pumps my gas. I wonder why the state of Oregon doesn’t trust each driver to fill his own tank, a regular procedure I have recently completed in Washington a few days ago.  Then I wonder if I should tip the man, but decide not to.  A few blocks down the road I pull into an apartment complex and circle the lot while Kayla gives me directions where to park.  Kayla and I worked together in a restaurant in Pittsburgh, became close friends, and then moved to opposite sides of the country.

I see a woman I recognize, but her glasses are new and she is thinner than I remember.  I introduce Erin and Kayla, and then we carry our dirty laundry inside the apartment, where Kayla pours us coffee.  I ask her how she is adjusting to her recent move, and she expresses doubt about her decision.  She admits that the Oregonian wilderness is beautiful, but there’s not many jobs in Portland.  She misses her friends in Pittsburgh and all the places that have become familiar.  I have not returned to Pittsburgh in over a year and find myself yearning for sights that became comfortably commonplace:  the view of the skyline from Mount Washington, the Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill, the Cathedral of Learning lit up after a victory.  

Kayla asks me what I would do:  stay here or go back home?  I cannot give her my answer until I have seen the city.  She escorts us onto the train that sends us into Portland, where we peruse Powell’s City of Books, a labyrinth of literature in color-coded rooms.  Then to dinner at Deschutes in the Pearl District.  We part ways and agree to meet at the apartment later while Erin and I navigate our way to Voodoo Donut, where their penis-shaped pastries have gained enough fanfare to land them a spot on TV shows like No Reservations and Man v. Food.

 

I wait in a long line outside the donut shop near a homeless man scratching the sidewalk with fingernails caked in dirt.  A few blocks behind us a community of homeless sleep on patches of grass near the curb.  A shirtless, potbellied man shouts in the street and throws punches at a pregnant woman, but no one intervenes.  A rusted Toyota is parked in front of a brick building painted with the slogan:  KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD.  I suspect oddity will never be an endangered species in this city. 

I enter the store and purchase circular donuts and one shaped like a cock that I choose to cut up with a fork later.  While dining on the patio, Erin and I discuss the depravity of the streets and quickly act on our desire to leave this place.  After a stroll through the Rose Garden, we catch the train back to Kayla’s, but now it is dark and we don’t remember which apartment is hers.  We try to find the right door without help, so I refrain from texting Kayla.  We have only been here once, but that is enough to help us find our way back.  Erin recognizes a grocery store across the street and a shortcut through a dirt patch and a staircase that somehow looks familiar even though we are surrounded by replicas.  I knock on the door and Kayla opens it with a surprised look on her face.

From what I have seen of Portland, I would not live there, but I don’t want to tell Kayla that.  I have moved four times, and I did not immediately like my new home at first.  I adjusted out of necessity, but I still complained about what the place lacked.  We seem hardwired to reject an unfamiliar environment until we learn it so well that we find it painful to leave.  Of course Portland is dirty, somewhat scary, and rampant with hipsters wearing cut-off jean shorts, plaid shirts, and handle-bar mustaches.  But the city has beautiful roses, too.

Back in the apartment, Kayla offers us tea.  I search through her cupboard for honey when I find a bottle of olive oil from Giant Eagle Market District, a Pennsylvanian grocery store.  

I can’t believe you brought this all the way out here, I say.  

On the living room floor we drink tea and laugh about the people we knew when our lives intersected on a frequent basis.  We wonder where everyone has scattered.  A mutual friend has gone to China.  He never thought he would leave this tiny restaurant in a mid-sized American city, let alone leave the country. 

I feel like I’m always searching for the next great adventure, Kayla says, but what if the great adventure is already behind me?  What if I was living the great adventure and didn’t realize it?

You already know what to expect from Pittsburgh, I say.  Staying here is a risk, but what if the risk is worth it?    

  

We used to complain about our old routines, and now I find myself being nostalgic for them.  I think of running through my favorite neighborhoods, and I recall conversations with friends I grew very fond of.  But nostalgia rarely leaves room for discomfort.  Before I moved, I didn’t know my way around the city, and there was a time when all my friends were strangers.     

The Reward of Our Anxieties

The Pacific Ocean is shrouded in fog. Giant rocks not far from shore jut up from the sea and host a colony of gulls.  I approach the short waves crashing against the brown muck and dip my toes into the water.  The cold sends a shriek through my nerves.  I’ve never seen a beach like this advertised.  The image before me isn’t programmed into my mind like the white sands of the Floridian gulf.  The scene is more beautiful because nobody is trying to sell it.

From Washington’s Olympic peninsula, we drive south along the scenic coastal route until the darkness renders the scenery moot.  Off the highway in a small town, we stop at a McDonald’s for a snack to keep us awake long enough to drive to Portland’s outskirts.  I am waiting in line when an entire grade-school football team trickles inside the restaurant.  Back on the road, I take the night shift.  I bite into my burger and taste mustard that shouldn’t be there.  I tell Erin this and she volunteers to wipe the mustard off the bun with a napkin.  I am hard-pressed to think of a more affectionate gesture.

On an expansive, uphill bridge a sign welcomes me to Oregon.  Below me, the Columbia River dissolves into the Pacific Ocean where Lewis and Clark reached the western terminus of a growing empire.  While summering in Yellowstone I started reading Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, an in-depth account of the Corps of Discovery’s journey through Louisiana Purchase lands.  The book inspires me to retrace parts of their expedition.  Well past sundown I follow signs to Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.  I want to see the ocean from their vantage point, to glimpse what it means to traverse an enormous continent.  Erin tells me it’s a silly idea because I won’t be able to see the ocean.  And besides, she continues, the park might be closed. 

We are on a tight schedule and are due in Portland tomorrow, so I press onward despite Erin’s advice because I don’t know when I’ll be in this corner of the country any time soon.  I worry that the park may be closed, and Erin is right.  The entrance is blocked off.  I park the car in front of the gate and consider my options.  The path beyond the gate dissolves into blackness surrounded by trees that could host animals with sharper teeth and better eyesight than me.  The temperature has dropped and the wind is blowing cold.

I suggest setting off on foot and ducking under the gate.  We can use our headlamps.  If we don’t see anything in five minutes, we’ll turn around and drive away.  But Erin wants no part of this plan.  I try to convince her with the thrill of adventure.  And what a fitting place this is for adventure.  She tells me I can do whatever I want, but she’s staying in the car.  I’m disappointed by her response but I also understand her hesitance to leave the safety and warmth of the passenger seat.  But this attachment to comfort is exactly what I fear.  I don’t want to be a passive observer on this trip.  I don’t want to watch things happen; I want to make them happen. 

    

I grab my headlamp and step into the chilly air.  A feeble beam of light illuminates a small tunnel through the eerie landscape.  The night is alive with the sound of insects, the wind shaking the branches.  The Chevy’s motor hums.  The headlights shine through the gaps in the gate, but still I cannot see how far the road goes.  I could walk for a mile and not see anything. 

In spite of what could go wrong or what type of disappointment awaits, I am tempted to try because Lewis and Clarke did much more than that.  They canoed westward from St. Louis half-expecting to find the dinosaurs that Thomas Jefferson believed were roaming the Great Plains. 

I gaze into the unknown and realize there’s probably a parking lot with a visitor center ahead.  I visualize myself groping in the dark, searching for something I can’t see.  All the while Erin waits in the car alone and worries about bears and my irrational decision.  I step back into the car and resolve to see the place in the first light of tomorrow.  We backtrack over the river once more to Washington, where I find a rest stop.  I roll the windows down a smidge and lie down in the backseat.  Before I drift off to sleep, I can hear the water lapping against the Columbia’s banks.

The Backseat Bed

We drive five hundred miles from Yellowstone until the heat of the day recedes and now the sky is dark.  We need a place to sleep, but we want to limit our spending on hotels.  I’ll be on the road for a month.  Even if I found a $50 room at a dumpy motel each night, I would spend over $1,500 on lodging, and that streak of luck would surely run out and so would my money.  Tonight begins our experiment in frugality.  Outside of Spokane, I drive around a Walmart parking lot and back up into a shadowy spot.

 

The selection process is important to guarantee a better sleep.  I seek a patch of darkness on the fringes of the lot far away from the store.  I park away from the cart returns because they have cameras installed on nearby lightpoles, but I usually choose a spot relatively close to employee cars so my car doesn’t look suspicious sitting for hours after midnight.  I point the nose toward the exit in case I need to flee.  Before shutting off the engine, I crack each window by an inch or two to ventilate the interior and prevent the windshield from fogging up.

Now it’s time to make the bed.  While the both of us are on the trip, the back seat is filled with luggage, snacks, and the cooler.  I scoot my seat forward and then transfer everything from the back into the front seats.  Because this isn’t usually what people do at grocery stores, we do this quickly to avert suspicion.  The worst that will likely happen is that someone will think we’re odd and wonder what we are doing, but I want to get into the habit of being sneaky because in some Walmarts overnight soliciting is illegal and security guards roam the parking lots in white pickup trucks.

Then we walk into the store to pretend like we’re actually shopping, but we’re just using the bathroom.  It is really annoying to wake up at three o’clock in the morning with a full bladder while you are stuck inside a car.  Faced with the option of walking a quarter mile into the store in a sleepy daze or sneaking a pee on a grass island in a desolate parking lot, laziness usually forces me to risk the latter.  We leave the store and casually walk back to the car and slip into the backseat.

I lie on my back on the padded bench.  My bended knees point toward the ceiling.  Erin crawls in next to me on layers of backpacks softened by pillows.  She closes the door and I hit the lock button and store the keys next to my headlamp inside the kangaroo pouch on the backside of the passenger seat.  I take out my contacts using a make-up mirror I balance on my chest and then stash my toiletry bag on the shelf under the rear windshield.  The piercing brightness of the parking lot lights are unavoidable, so I drape a hoody over my eyes and turn on my side, my face digging into the seat.  My head and upper body are relatively comfortable, although smooshed in the tight space.  I can’t fully extend my legs, so my knees are bent all night.  Sleep arrives regardless. 

We wake at dawn.  I kick open the door and stretch the stiffness out of my joints.  I don my glasses and a hat to hide my bedhead and then step into the moccasins I use as my driving shoes to mitigate the pain in my heel.  Despite the awkward sleeping arrangement, I feel refreshed and motivated to move.  We return to the store and buy a bundle of bananas and two packets of yogurt each for a total less than five dollars. 

A free night’s stay, twenty-four hour access to bathrooms, and a cheap, accessible, and portable breakfast are the biggest advantages of Walmart camping.  After adapting to this system, it seems silly to pay seventy to a hundred dollars to sleep in a bed for eight hours if I’m just going to get back in my car the next morning.  The less money I spend on hotels, the farther I can drive, and the more of this country I can see.  The most glaring flaw in this plan, however, is that I have no access to showers, but I soon find a solution heading west on I-90 through the scrublands of eastern Washington. 

With a name like the Evergreen State, I didn’t expect to find a desert here.  The temperatures rise higher than I anticipate.  My car doesn’t have air conditioning, so sweat begins to run down my back.  I have a higher threshold for personal grossness than Erin.  We are heading to Seattle, and I bet she’s thinking we should blend in with the rest of the pedestrians hygienically. 

I’m staring out the window while Erin is driving through the Columbia basin on a corridor mostly empty except for eighteen-wheelers.  The big rigs coax a memory out of me.  A few years ago my aunt drove my brother and I from Pennsylvania to Texas in a small RV.  When I was looking for the restrooms in a Love’s truck stop, I stumbled upon a shower block instead.  Now I wonder if these amenities are exclusive for truckers.  I don’t see why a gas station would discriminate drivers based on how many wheels spin under their vehicles, but these stops are created to benefit those lugging all of our junk around the country.  They should have priority over somebody who is driving just for fun.  After all, the highway is the trucker’s workspace.

I google truck stop showers and read a positive review from a roadie, and a few miles up ahead we’ll have an opportunity to see if he was telling the truth. At a Love’s gas station in Ellensburg, I pass the soft drink coolers and discover the shower block.  I hear the spray of water raining from a nozzle behind one of six doors.  I try the handle but find it locked.  At the counter, I see a sign that says showers are free if you buy fifty or more gallons of gas. My tank can’t hold that much, so I’ll have to pay eleven dollars.

I return to the car to retrieve my backpack, now filled with a towel and travel-sized soap bottles, and hand over the money to the cashier, who gives me a key and says my shower is available now.  I pass a man in a red uniform cleaning an open stall and discarding used towels into a bin.  I find the door number that corresponds with the number on my key and close it behind me.  The room is much cleaner than I had anticipated.  There is a sink, toilet, and a shower cordoned off with a thin curtain.  I turn on the water, and the pressure is strong.  The shower is not raised so the runoff forms a puddle in front of the toilet before escaping down a nearby drain.

 

I expect the water to shut off after five minutes.  At the least I imagine the hot water will disappear causing me to shriek from the sudden cold, but this never happens.  I dress and gather my belongings and return my key at the counter, where a fellow inquires about the quality of my experience.  I tell him the shower was refreshing, and he is very pleased to hear this.  I have never seen a man so enthusiastic about another man’s hygiene.  Aside from the awkwardness of announcing to gas station patrons that you are too cheap to pay for a hotel room and you so desperately need to clean yourself just off the highway in Ellensburg, Washington of all places, the experiment is highly successful.  For a grand total of sixteen dollars, I have slept, eaten breakfast, and properly groomed myself for a day in the city.  I eventually discover I can reduce this number even further, but to do that I’ll have to break a few rules.  Not the kind of rules that will get you into serious trouble, but rules nonetheless.     

Out of the Wild

The summer season at Yellowstone comes to a close after two days of scrubbing floors and polishing hard-to-reach places on stainless steel.  A cool breeze shimmies the tree branches while a family of deer snack on leaves from a bush I can’t identify.  If I lived here permanently I would call the bushes mine since they inhabit the area around my home, but those who live here year-round know they can’t claim any land as their own.  I clean out my cabin until it looks properly vacant.  I meticulously arrange my luggage into the backseat and the trunk of my car, a twenty year old Chevy Lumina with a cracked windshield. 

Hugs and handshakes are exchanged on the last morning.  I don’t make any promises because I’m making this up as I go.  I hand in my paperwork and key to personnel and wait in the parking lot for my girlfriend, Erin, to do the same.  The location manager approaches me on the way to his office and asks where I’m going.

“To Spokane,” I say, although that only explains a tiny percentage of my itinerary.

 

“It’s a beautiful drive,” he says.  “Through western Montana.”

A few weeks ago Erin and I drove to a coffee shop in Gardiner, Montana to plan our road trip and map out our course until we reached a place where our phones would work.  In the parking lot outside the Roosevelt Lodge my phone doesn’t receive a signal, so I ask the location manager which roads to take.  I know where I’m going because there are so few places to turn in the West, but I want to double-check.

He tells me to drive to Bozeman and then head west on Interstate 90 that would take me all the way to Seattle.  Erin emerges from the personnel office and steps inside the passenger seat.  The location manager and I shake hands and wish each other good luck.  I get in the car and shut the door. 

I’ve made some modifications to the car to make it more comfortable, seeing as I will be driving thousands of miles and living in it for over a month.  The driver’s seat isn’t properly welded to the floor, so it jostles back and forth when I stop or accelerate.  To stabilize the seat, I used Erin’s backpack as a wedge.  I stuffed my eighty liter hiking backpack with things I don’t need for the trip and use this to fill in the rest of the gap between the front and back seats.  Then I placed pillows on top of the luggage to make the surface even with the bench.  To create the bed, I jammed the buckles into the gaps in the bench and added a few sheets, a sleeping bag, and two blankets to serve as padding.

Inside the trunk I am storing my fold-up bike, Erin’s suitcase, several boxes of my books, my clothes, my hiking gear, a canister of bear spray, and a box of wood and firestarter discs to use at campsites.  On top of the backseat bed, there are Erin’s camera, my smaller backpack, a gallon jug of water, a plastic bag full of snacks, and an empty cooler.  Every replenishment is within reach, and we still have enough room to stretch our legs and look out the rear windshield.

 

The spinning wheels kick up the dust in the parking lot and take me past the wooden cabins that used be my neighborhood, but currently this place resembles a village abandoned due to a forecast of war.  Winter is the enemy the people are fleeing.  Before the bears hibernate and the snow settles, there is more life to be found in the forests than in this place of commerce.  No more waiting on tourists who ask me where all the bears are hiding.  Gone are the nights I wake up shivering to rebuild a fire to make sleep possible once again.  But gone, too, is the privacy that comes with living in a remote wilderness and its accompanying dark sky that reveals its Milky Way dust. 

Where I am headed there won’t herds of bison grazing in the valleys.  Instead there will be rows and rows of houses blocking the view of the sunset.  There will be commuters driving from offices to houses where they can adjust thermostats to keep the outside from getting in.  Normalcy is a relative status.  In a matter of time, the body acclimatizes to meet the demands of the environment.  A man can grow used to breathing thinner air until he believes there’s none better to be had.

  

The Lamar River at sunset.

I turn left onto the loop road and head north toward Mammoth Hot Springs.  The road climbs up into the mountains and skirts the naked remnants of forest fires.  On the Blacktail Plateau several cars are parked on the side of the road.  Photographers aim their expensive lenses at a doglike creature panting in the high, yellow grasses.  I have seen every type of large predator Yellowstone has to offer with the exception of a wolf.  I pull over and step outside the car wondering if I could be lucky enough to spot a wolf on my last day. 

A short-haired, middle-aged woman stares through a pair of binoculars.  As I near her, she tells me there’s a wolf in that field about thirty yards away.  I can make out the animal’s shape, and it seems tall from this distance.  I can’t conclude what I am seeing until the animal turns around.  On the tip of its tail there is a patch of black fur. 

“That’s a coyote,” I tell the woman.

 

“No, it’s a wolf,” she says.  “I’m sure of it.  I’ve been watching it for fifteen minutes.” 

You’ve been staring at a coyote for fifteen minutes then, I think of saying, but instead I let her believe what she wants so as not to poison her memory with disappointment. The coyote turns away from the crowd and finds a more interesting diversion.  I press on toward the steaming thermophiles of Mammoth Hot Springs and beyond the band of elk grazing on hotel lawns. 

Upper terrace of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Around the bend is the border of Wyoming and Montana. We leave Yellowstone northward bound through the tiny town of Gardiner, where we used to go to the pharmacy to use Wi-Fi and drink Huckleberry milkshakes.  I play a John Mayer album as we dart through the vast ranches of Paradise Valley until we exit the highway and pull into the Walmart parking lot in Bozeman.  We need a loaf of bread, lunchmeat, a bag of ice, and a road atlas so we know which way to go when GoogleMaps can’t find us.