Some Conversations

At the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, I stepped on a stone the wrong way and twisted my right knee.  From that point on, I was in some pain, which was made worse when I had to drive thousands of miles, using that leg. 

It wasn't until today that I've been able to walk for three miles.  Walking time is thinking time for me, the time when I work out stories.   Today, however, I was thinking about conversations I had on my trip. 

There was operator of an RV Park. She had left New York State to marry a real cowboy and settle down on a small ranch.  Now, about to turn 50, she was divorcing him and wondering where to go with her children.  She was thinking of going back east.   Taciturn western men don't talk all that much.  Rugged individualism can equate to downright rudeness.   

I met two women at the North Dakota visitors' center at Beach, who drove the pilot cars for the over sized trucks that carry the giant wind turbines going up all over the United States.  One of them had just been in Montana, her fiftieth state.  Later, I would see the giant blades turning throughout the western states.

In Pomeroy, Washington State, I stayed at the county fairgrounds and talked to the construction workers who were putting the great turbines in place. One worker was stringing the wires that brought the electricity from the windmills to the power plants.  He lived in a tent at the fairgrounds.  He said he believed in a balanced federal budget, but felt that the money spent on alternative energies was well spent...especially when it created jobs. 

At a Motel 6 laundry room, I talked to a young married couple who were in the foreign service.  They had just returned from Afghanistan.  They had been to Yellowstone and were now on their way to Glacier National Park, to look at glaciers while they still existed.   They seemed to feel a certain pessimism about the future of the country.  Sad. 

In Gold Beach, Oregon, at another laundromat, I met a fellow from Oklahoma City who was vacationing on the West Coast. He didn't want to leave Oregon, he said. He was born in Oklahoma, but he hated the idea of returning, because there had been 30 days of temperatures above 100 degrees.  The state was burning up, and people worried about another dust bowl.  But he had a good job there and would have to go back. His sadness sticks with me.   

At Wilsall, I pitched my tent at the Ft. Wilsall motel next to a tepee and surrounded by log huts.  I loved the spacious shower, and would have stayed two days, but the manager said she had booked the entire place for a cowboy yoga group.  I still wonder what cowboy yoga is!    

The scenery was lovely but it is the stories I heard and the people I talked to that stay with me.