For some reason on this trip I twice found myself staring into enormous holes in the ground. After years of passing by, this article made me rabid to see the meteor crater in Arizona. It cost $15, and had lotsa pizzaz — a local AM band with a repeating promo, rock-camouflage speakers blasting that promo out front, and an interactive, video-full visitors center. But there is no meteor. Just the hole. You can’t go into the hole. And when I was there, as thunderclouds rolled in, you couldn’t even take a tour of its perimeter. Look at the hole, folks. Look at the hole and move on.
Then, 327 miles away, the Capulin Volcano. 60,000 years ago it went seriously kablooey. Molten lava, hot ash, but all in one blast, followed by nothing. Now some vegetation and critters have made themselves comfortable. But what’s there to look at? A low-key visitors center, a $5 fee to drive up to the top, and friendly locals. And, you guessed it: A big hole in the ground. But at the volcano, you can walk either around the edge or down into the middle. You can even touch the plants and lava rocks.
Of course the volcano is a better deal, but the real power of both holes in the ground is how they resonate in the visitor’s imagination. crashing! v. exploding! or… something tangible from outer space! v. something tangible from the center of our planet! Think about it. And you don’t even have to see for yourself (but if you want to, more pics of holes and driving here).
One of the many outrageously wonderful motel signs in tiny Raton, New Mexico. See ‘em all and more road stuff.
If only Robin Hood could bring me some REF. AIR for my car.
Online access spotty. Heck, electricity access spotty.
Photo taken on old 66 near Seligman, Arizona.
For those who don’t recognize the LA skyline, that’s downtown. With palm trees. And a very nearly full moon.
When my gracious Seattle hosts took me to Georgetown — for a beer, not books — we found the Fantagraphics store, just 6 months old.
I took the ferry from Fauntleroy in Seattle to Vashon Island. The tide was so low that on both sides of the sound, children piled onto the flats by the schoolbusload. But I know that tide flats are stinky and slimy, so I was looking up.
Vashon was beautiful and green, but I was too stunned by the stories of the harsh winter (6 days without power! hills so icy the car had to be abandoned!) that I forgot to take photos.
Instead, an audio treat of my Vashon friend Michael Whitmore and his Some’tet performing “Bottom.”
What does this have to do with books? Michael’s son, who speaks French like his mom Laura, brought over a picture book to show me. There were French words for what the kids did and held (peigne for comb, bain for bath). The little boy’s favorite? Derriere for bottom.
Michael will be playing with this other band he’s in, Listing Ship, on tour briefly next month.
One sister, C, departs from New York on Sunday night driving an average of 70mph. The other sister, L, leaves Seattle with boyfriend T on Wednesday. L and T average 75mph. C is headed west, toward Seattle; L and T are travelling east and spend their first night in Idaho. When L calls C on Thursday around noon, where is C?
(a) Fergus Falls, Minnesota
(b) Jamestown, North Dakota
(c) Forsyth, Montana
(d) 10 miles away on the I-90. Time for lunch!
The entirely improbable answer is, as you can see, (d). As far as I knew, Laurie and Tom weren’t even on the same highway as me. The fact Laurie and I both had a cell phone signal in those mountains, and that I wasn’t way across the state, like she figured — that, in fact, we were heading toward each other, only a few miles apart — well, it’s a kind of crazy sisterly coincidence.
Which brings me to Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, coming out this fall from Random House. Not that my sister and I are twins. Anyway, more about the book after the jump.
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1200 miles down, 1600 to go. That combined with storm reports put me into serious driver mode: only highways, no meals, no fun. Reading? Not a chance. Having a decent book post for the blog? Hopeless.
UNTIL … I happened to drive by a sign for The World’s Largest Sandhill Crane.
The enormous metal crane loomed so large that I had to stop. I’d seen a few giant, elegant birds trying to dodge the storms and didn’t recognize them. Just maybe, I thought, they were cranes like Richard Powers wrote about in The Echo Maker.
The Echo Maker, which won the 2006 National Book Award, is mostly about memory, identity and relationships, with a bit of scientific hubris and environmentalism thrown in. Tying all the themes together is a motif of sandhill cranes migrating across the plains.
If you missed it last October, Ed Champion organized a five-part roundtable of The Echo Maker readers to discuss the book. In the last part, Richard Powers joined in and answered some of our questions. Read The Echo Maker, and check out the rountable: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.
This morning I started out in La Porte, Indiana. When I was looking at map trying to figure out where to sleep, it jumped out at me because I’m a fan of La Porte, Indiana, the book. It’s an amazing collection of mid-century portraits, all shot in a photo studio in town there.
Not so long ago, Jason Bitner, co-creator of Found Magazine, was on a roadtrip and stopped to eat in La Porte. The cafe was decorated with tons of these pictures, and Jason asked what was up: boxes of ‘em, apparently, upstairs, from the long-closed photo studio. Jason stayed for days to select the pictures that would make it into the book.
My plan, staying in La Porte, was to eat breakfast in the cafe and see the pictures for myself. But like many roadtrip plans, this one was bypassed. No leisurely cafe. Just driving driving. Although I did manage to squeeze in a short walk by the lake before buckling up.
Me, I’m in St. Cloud, Minnesota, ready to head west toward Seattle in the AM. Weather.com says:
A potent trough of low pressure aloft will be swinging out of the Rockies and into the northern Plains. Severe thunderstorms will erupt across the northern Plains as a result.
Areas under the gun will include parts of eastern Montana, western and central portions of the Dakotas and northwest Nebraska. The threat will continue Wednesday night, sliding eastward into northern Minnesota and the eastern sections of the Dakotas and Nebraska. Large hail, damaging winds and a few tornadoes are likely.
Whoopie! Now all I need is a little dog. And a house. And a scarecrow, a lion and a tin man.
