Another American Adventure: meanwhile

Saturday, May 22, 2010

meanwhile

Update: 7PM, John is in the home stretch. He had just crossed the PA border and was about 40 miles away from the Extended Stay, where he has reservations. Jeep was running like a top, cool and steady. He stayed at a Days Inn outside of Savannah last night, had a free coupon for breakfast at Denny's and was astounded at the amount of food they wanted to give him - six pancakes (for one person!), eggs, bacon, 16 ounce glass of orange juice! Only in America, he said. Oh, and West Virginia is beautiful.

No news from John this morning means that he's still rolling (I think.)

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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.