Into the wild...ish

42 years ago, my uncle went to Liberia in the Peace Corps. He built a school and a market and taught English to Liberians in a small town far from anywhere. He had a choice between cockroaches or spiders and chose the former. This year, he returned, to find new buildings to replace those destroyed in the civil war, and to find that in many respects, not much has changed. The buildings he built were still there, the school he taught at as well, and his former host family still lived in the same house. Only everything and everyone was 42 years older. Why is it that the West has seen rock n roll develop, the cold war grow and die, social revolution, the end of segregation, bad hairdos, disco, color TV, portable computers and adjustable-rate mortgages?

One year and nine weeks ago, I left the US for Europe, bearing with me a suitcase full of memories, a lifetime’s upbringing and the teary but genuine blessing of my parents, for the third time. And again I have returned, but this time not to live but only to visit, and I am back again on a plane. The map tells me I’m somewhere over Illinois between Peoria and somewhere else, and the cloud-filled patchwork below me offers no further clues. The map continuously rotates: Illinois, Midwest, USA, Illinois, Midwest, USA. I suppose it all depends on your context. The answer to “who are you?” or “where are you from?” depends on the interlocutor and the context: for some people, the country suffices; for others, I must specify my state; others will want to know my hometown. You decide how much meaning is in the answer. The more I travel and the more I live abroad, the more important it is, I realize, to actually be “from” somewhere, even if that’s not where I currently live. I saw a DVD on Bob Dylan, a documentary titled “No direction home”. It well explained his rambling soul, how he left his childhood behind with a harmonica and a guitar, and how he changed a generation (or several). A part of me recognizes in him my own wandering spirit. Still, despite all that he has achieved, I feel a bit sorry for him for having felt so little connection to his roots that he changed his given name.

I don’t know if I’ve gained much outside perspective on the US for having been abroad. Certainly I see the follies of our politics, the defects consistently and insistently highlighted by our detractors, but I recognize the positives that Hollywood ignores or doesn’t glorify. I think, though, that the widest divide isn’t between me and my European friends and acquaintances based on our nationalities, but rather the vast chasm between those of us with opportunities and those of us without. There is poverty and despair in the US as well; we don’t all need to gallivant off to Africa to find people with barely enough to eat and scarce hope of a better future. And for all of the angry young men facing 60% or higher unemployment in Africa, in the Middle East and elsewhere, there are high-schools full of self-destructive teenagers in the middle of their respective personal Angst, squandering the opportunities we were granted, unasked for and unappreciated, wrecking our second or third car, drinking away our youths and our livers, cutting classes and wasting time. For all of those youngsters who waste their parents’ money on those repeated tries at college after partying precluded passing, there are kids of the same age who don’t get to go to school. They end up having a family and working at Walmart and just scraping by, and they give up far more dreams than we can ever waste with our selfishness.


As we were parking the truck, perched precariously on the outside corner of a dirt road where, stepping out, you could gaze down at several hundred meters of not very much. It makes you check the parking brake just one more time. On all sides of us loomed hills blossoming into mountains, rugged, craggy things interrupted by a verdant valley. A road leading to the quarry gashed the opposite hillside, and for our part, we were faced with a trail in two directions: ‘up’ and ‘down’. On this side of the Rockies, snow and rainfall – and particularly this summer – evoke a startling change from the Eastern slope; instead of scrubby forests and sparse undergrowth, the entire forest was carpeted by a thick underbrush of grass and wildflowers. Tall and slender pines were interspersed with our one and only kind of leafy tree, the aspen, which is all part of one organism and turns a beautiful gold color in the autumn.

I had forgotten how quickly the storms roll in. Outsiders think we’re paranoid for worrying about the weather on a perfectly clear day, but as they say, “if you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait half an hour.” Usually a couple of people die each year from lightning strikes from the violent, black clouds. It can start with little puffy clouds on the horizon, not much and not too threatening, but within a few minutes they gather and darken. Standing on the ridgeline, watching the storm come in, sends your heart, mind and legs racing to find a safe place. The thunder is already echoing, rumbling long and low when the storm is far off, and cracking like a whip, simultaneous with the flash, when it is upon you. It begins with the gusting wind, and you can see the sheets of rain across the valley. You know your turn is up, you know you’ll be drenched, and you start looking for places to hide. It may pour in one valley and completely skip the other one; you could see hailstones the size of marbles or golf balls, followed by rain and brilliant sunshine. Sometimes it’s over quickly, and sometimes it sets in for a pounding.

Near Crested Butte we found a trail drenched in wildflowers. They were everywhere and in all colors, reds, pinks, purples, whites, yellows, blues, all across the hillsides. Europe, at least the bits I’ve mostly been to, lacks the riotousness of a natural wood. Here there are no trees planted in rows, no manicured, landscaped horticultures interspersed with marble statues. Here there is a craggy rock face higher than Mont Blanc, there a waterfall and a hidden valley, and everywhere the signs of a living ecosystem.

I’m happy to report that Boulder is just as much filled with strange people as ever. In addition to street performers of the usual ilk (as in, playing actual instruments or some kind of performance), we have the wheelchair pirate, the girl in the gorilla suit, and the beggar who only accepts donations that are stapled to his body. With a stapler. Everything seems to be health food, people are snobby about the beer, and there are almost as many roadbikes as on the Tour de France. Dreadlocks and tattoos abound, the coffee shops are full of wannabe poets and musicians with the light scent of self-righteousness and political leftism.