The Journey 2.1: And We're Off!

(July 26, 2016): On the Train to Glenwood Springs, Colorado

The next adventure begins. 

We will cover many more miles than the last adventure, generally in greater comfort, until we don’t.  At the centerpiece of this journey is a long hike along the ancient Camino de Santiago/Way of St. James in northern Spain.  We will begin that piece on or around September 6 and expect to be walking until mid-October.

That portion of the trip will be a physical, mental, and spiritual challenge.  We will walk from St. Jean Pied de Port on the foot of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, cross the mountains into Basque Spain, then walk 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela, the traditional goal of the pilgrimage.  We hope to walk another 70 miles to the Atlantic Ocean at Finisterre.

Along the way, we plan to stay at the various albergues (pilgrim hostels) or refugios (pilgrim huts) provided by various volunteer and religious groups along the way.    These are generally no-frills dorms used by the many thousands of people who come from all over the world to take this walk.  We are interested to meet these people, but hope that the lack of privacy, the noise of snoring (including our own), and general hubbub does not mean we can’t sleep.  As we know from trying to camp in the heat after a long day of cycling, bad sleep means a bad adventure.    

It will be an exercise in simplicity. We will carry very little, about 15 pounds each.  We have lightweight, but fully supported backpacks.  We have been practicing—a bit—with them.  We have gone on a few trips using just the materials we are taking, honing the pack, eliminating and adding clothes and personal items.  I am trying not to make the same mistake we made with the cross-country bike trip.  We were carrying gloves, hats, and fleeces we would need in October when we started out in July, when we were facing temperatures near 100̊F.  We dumped them halfway through Washington.

I successfully fought the desire to pack ankle braces and elastic bandages.  But somehow, I still have a few pounds of personal items like moleskin, aspercreme and other “I know this is going to hurt” stuff.  Prudence?  Fear?

I am trying to have enough trust that I will be able to get what I need—in Spanish—when and if I need it.   However, the “we might” and “we could” and “what if” functions in my brain are well-trodden paths .  “It’ll be fine,”  and “deal with it when and if it arrives” are more unfamiliar functions.   

Traveling light and having faith: those are two watchwords for this journey.  Plus, learning about the state of the world from the people we encounter.  We are poking our nose above the fence of our everyday American lives.  What’s happening out there?

While the sojourn across the country was, in many ways, a journey away…from work, from our middle years, from the home-centered identity which had held us fast for so long---this is a journey to.  To? To…a deeper conversation with God, a broader fellowship with the world, a new way of earning a living.  Or so I think.  Who knows what the journey will actually bring. 

I didn’t know I was finding a way to leave Matrix for good when I started on the bike trip.  But that is what the trip brought me.   I thought I was just going to re-boot my relationship to work. Wrong.

So here I am, sitting in the exhibition car of the California Zephyr.  Looking out over the vast expanses of corn that are the hallmark of America’s midsection.  In my sight, a young Eur-Am family, two strawberry blonde boys bored by their father’s attempts to entertain them with a card game.  To their left, a retired couple; the husband’s shirt is nearly identical to Wes’ grey green Hawaiian blouse.  They stare inconsolately at the Amish father and son, who came to sit at their table and now fitfully snooze across from them.  They are both wearing blue shirts and black vests.  Their hair is cut into a Dutch-boy bob.  The father has a 19^th century patriarch grey beard  (no mustache, cut low on the chin and straggling six inches down to his chest.)  Patriarch dad announced to uncomfortable retirees that they are from Canton, Ohio.   He speaks loudly with a pronounced German-ish accent.   His son is baby-faced and pink cheeked, with a prominent long nose.  At fourteen or so, he is as beautiful as he ever will be.

I don’t know if they are Amish. They could be Mennonite.  There are many, many of them on this train heading west and they surprise me.  The women wear starched white caps over their hair, and all are wearing long skirts.  Their affect is 19^th century, until I see one with a digital camera taking a family photo in Chicago Union Station’s Great Hall.  Or I see a pair of blue aviator sunglasses perched on the brim of black felt hat.  Or catch a glimpse of flip-flops under a capacious gingham skirt. 

Behind them, a middle-aged  Afram couple is playing dominoes.  Both are wearing sweatshirts; she has a line of white ringlets running down the middle of her head, in sharp contrast to smooth black hair above her ears.  I suspect it is a hairpiece.   She looks a bit like a gilded age skunk.

Behind us, a Euram family crams into two benches surrounding a table.   For a moment, the two sons joined my table.   Resplendent in bright orange t-shirts, I noticed the gaggle waiting at the gate.  I asked the boys if they were part of group.  The younger, about 10 years old with helmet tan colored hair, stared at me wide-eyes.  His older brother (?), more confident at the age 13, tells me they are a family going to see their aunt in Denver.   I ask if they are going to a family reunion.  They don’t answer, and soon scoot away to cram in with two women and two girls.

The diner car attendant is a comedian who regularly comes on the loudspeaker to announce “pineapple forests” or the “mountains of Illinois.”  We are joined by a mother and daughter.  She is slight, with a shag haircut, well sprinkled with grey.  Her daughter has shoulder length hair, lightly curled at her shoulders, dusted with scarlet dye over her black base.  They are originally from southern China.  Mom is visiting her daughter, a purchaser for Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, and they are on their way to San Francisco.  Mom is an 80-year old pediatric nurse who looks about 65 years old. While she has a narrow face, her daughter’s face is quite round, but they share in common a long nose with wide nostrils.  They often laugh, and their noses crinkle and eyes nearly disappear in their delight.

Heather and Wii Chee

Mom is visiting from Yangjiang.  A few years ago, after her businessman husband died, the daughter, who now goes by the name of Heather, brought her namesake mother, Wii Chee (?) to live with them in Troy, Michigan.  However, Wii Chee doesn’t speak English, doesn’t drive, and was isolated and bored in suburban Detroit.  So she moved back to China but comes to visit for long stretches of time.  She will be here for 5 months on this trip.  Heather’s husband was to have been traveling with them.  A businessman in Troy, he was called back to China after his mother had a stroke.  He has been back three times and recently missed his youngest daughter’s graduation from high school.

Heather came to US as the lone female engineering student at the University of Nebraska.  She worked as an engineer for some years, landing in Belleville, Michigan and working for the automotive supply company Borg Warner.  She disliked engineering, and found her way to becoming one of three purchasers of steel for Ford.  She has been doing this for 15 years and loves it.  She is only purchaser with a background in engineering, which gives her an advantage both in and out of the company.

Neither son nor daughter, both born in the United States, were interested in following their mother’s interest in mechanical engineering.  The 25 year old son is studying medicine and the daughter will go to UM to study business.  Wes points out that it quite common for grandchildren to follow the employment patterns of the grandparents.  When Heather tells her mother, the older woman’s eyes widen, then she laughs and laughs, saying she never noticed that. We visit and visit, about cars, kids, and steel, until they are called to dinner.

Seated for dinner later, we sit across from two sisters Martha and Margaret, both college professors on their way to San Francisco.  Martha is professor of Latin in the Classics department at SUNY-Buffalo, while Margaret is a professor of history at Las Cruces, New Mexico. We have a long talk about the price of college and the  indentured servitude students now enter.  Martha tells of a graduate student in her department who entered the program with $100,000 in debt and has now accrued another $50,000.  We can’t conceive how he will ever pay for it.

I remember when the US thought an educated populace was a social good. Margaret tells that she paid $50 a semester at UC-Berkley.  The tuition is now $10,000 a semester.  Martha remarks that we just aren’t making the investments we need in students, road, or infrastructure.  And then we are off to the races politically…

The next morning we have breakfast with a couple traveling to San Francisco.  Denise a small energetic woman with short hair and a straightforward manner; she is an American-born radio astronomer at the University of Cork, Ireland.  Paul has brownish shaggy hair that he regularly sweeps away from his face, and a strong body hidden in baggy nerd clothes. He was raised near Cambridge, England and recently retired as a communications engineer for British Rail.  They met on a development study trip in Ecuador, where they spent six weeks in close quarters and have been inseparable since.  We have long conversation about alternative energy, of which they are knowledgeable and passionate.  When we part, Paul laughs, saying their previous conversation with fellow travelers had been all about llama breeding.

Our final encounter is with a young couple in the first flushes of their love affair.  They are in the early 20’s, on their way to a town outside Sacramento.  She is full modern-day hippie: purple headband, tie-dyed shirt, star encrusted leggings, multiple stone necklaces.  She is carrying a variety of whole and organic foods.  In between snacking on celery and hummus, she draws several versions of a mandala she would like to get as a tattoo on her forearm.  He looks a bit like a full faced Brad Pitt, with long dark blond hair, startling grey eyes, and an easy, slightly crooked grin.   They snuggle and touch constantly.  When the train enters one of the 27 tunnels on its way through the mountains, they kiss and giggle.   He has just returned from working as welder on very high end racing sailboats, where it wasn’t unusual for the boats to cost more than a $1m dollars.  She has been working a sort of Upward Bound camp near Durango, Colorado.  They boarded the train in Chicago and are trying to figure out what’s next for them.  He tells me Colorado is adding 14,000 new residents each year.  That means construction jobs and a chance for him to get a good welding job. 

They are more interested in each other than anything else, so we leave them to go watch the hundreds of rafters, kayakers, paddle boarders, and fishers in dories making their way down the Colorado River.  A remarkable number sees fit to moon the train.

When we arrive in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, we are very happy to get off the train. 33 hours on Amtrak is infinitely better than the sardine torture of modern airplane rides, far less draining on body and car than a 3 day drive across the country, but we didn’t sleep well and our backs are complaining. 

We climb off the train and stand blinking in the 100 degree heat. The first step of our amazing journey is complete.  Now off to the adventure of a family wedding.