Killing a Turkey on the 4th of July led to an outpouring of messages from new and old friends about which places in the USA should comprise the itinerary for This Land Is Your Land (the name I have given to the fabulous voyage we are planning across the USA!). I was super touched by your interest and enthusiasm, and present to you this map (designed by my amazing 16 year old tech advisor, Carmen), featuring the itinerary we have more or less settled on.
How did we settle on this route? It was not happenstance. In fact, it is pretty much all we have analyzed for the last three months. And because each decision about route had so much meaning poured into it, I will have to explain in pieces, starting at the beginning:
At the moment we touch down in Seattle, Washington, where I lived for four years in my early ‘20s, it will be exactly 21 years since I drove out of Seattle for the last time, on a solo voyage across the USA. I was a few months away from the start of graduate school in New Orleans, and a few months on from a major heartbreak that left me feeling that a.) no one would ever love me again and; b.) Who needed love anyway?
I drove out of Seattle in 1995 determined to forge my life as an independent woman, one who was not afraid to travel the USA solo (did it, in a zig zag, over 6 weeks) and who was not afraid to repeat the experience (by train, boat, and bus) in Europe (did it, by parking my car at my parent’s – who had just moved back to the States – and flying to Holland). From Amsterdam, I kicked off a solo trip across the UK, France, and Spain, before returning to DC six weeks later, where I picked up my car and headed to Louisiana. In my mind’s eye, New Orleans was the final destination and I saw myself staying there, in all my solo glory, for the rest of my life (or at least as far forward as a 25 year old woman believes she can see).
The summer of solo travel was exhilarating in many ways, and I was proud of myself for doing it. I felt tough and self-determining and even a little “fuck-you’ish,” like, I don’t need someone else’s approval, permission, or company, for that matter, to see the world.
But it was a lonely trip too, and what I learned is that while I may not have needed the approval or permission, I would have really loved the company. Which has something to do with how it happened that I drove into New Orleans and about three minutes later fell in love with the man I would marry, and agreed to follow him to Kenya.
So the kids and I will start our voyage in Seattle because Seattle is in many ways where I left off, in so far as my American life was concerned. (Although I was in New Orleans for two years between Seattle and Kenya, having agreed to leave the country with Tano turned New Orleans into a limbo land waiting zone for me. All of my ideas about roots and connection and attachment to place were suspended and redirected into my relationship –an unhealthy model, true, but a necessary symbiosis at the time.)
I know that Seattle has changed since I lived there, 21 years ago, when the reputation of the city leaned heavily on things that at the time felt incredibly unique: Coffee houses, grunge, and environmental activism. I have been told that the “new” Seattle is built on high technology, international business, and an influx of ultra-educated newcomers whose professional ambitions have largely obscured the carefree, laid-back spirit that epitomized the city I once knew.
I don’t know. Things change – as they say, it is the only thing there is ever any certainty about. I know how much I have changed since I drove away from Seattle all those years ago. I was young and headstrong and in many ways naive, but such a free spirit…which is really what I most associate with Seattle. Free spiritedness. I would like to believe that I have carried that spirit with me, into the rest of my life, and that I have passed it on to my children. This is a voyage of discovery we are taking, and part of what we will find out is where and how we find our own self-images reflected back at us.
This photo was taken when Lorenzo was five and Carmen was eleven. It was the year that Carmen and I started talking about taking a trip across the USA…when the time was right! That time is NOW!