Blue Highways: Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

We get to a rural area of Lake Winnipesaukee with William Leat Heat-Moon (LHM) where he remarks on the pickups he sees.  I grew up with pickups and have lots of memories about them and the DIY culture in small towns that makes them necessary.  If you want to know where Lake Winnipesaukee is located, do some DIY at the map.

Book Quote

"I took route 104 up to the motel congestion of the west side of Lake Winnipesaukee - the lake with a hundred thirty different spellings and almost as many translations from the Indian (the best is 'the smile of the Great Spirit') - and then around to the north shore into quieter country.  On this corner of the lake, instead of stationwagons with wet swimtrunks tied to antennas and door handles, there were worn pickups, each hauling at least one rusty something."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

Sunset over Lake Winnipesaukee, by Valerie Laroque. Photo hosted at Travelpod. Click on photo to go to host page.

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

The words that catch my eye in the quote above are "worn pickups, each hauling at least one rusty something."

If you have read a few of my posts as we journey with LHM together in Blue Highways, you know that I grew up in a small town in Northern California.  One of the facets of living in a small town is that the number of services and amenities available to people is limited.  Sure, you can probably find every service that is needed, or every item that you want, but there are still restricted choices.  What if, for some reason, you don't trust or like the service?  What if the model and make is no longer available?

By necessity, people who live in small towns are usually DIYers in some way, shape or form.  They do their own landscaping, their own gardening, their own building.  If repairs need to be made on automobiles, many of them do it themselves unless the job is so complicated that it needs to go to a shop.

And because hauling needs to be done, people in small towns own pickups.  A typical two-car family will often have a sedan of some type, and a pickup.  I grew up with a succession of pickups that my father owned.  The first I remember was his International Harvester and his last truck before he died was a Ford F150, I think, but I'm not quite sure.

Not only that, but in my town every truck had some things that were standard accoutrements.  Each truck had a gun rack, because almost everyone went hunting at some point or another during the year.  Each truck also usually came equipped with a chain saw, because almost every home was heated by a fireplace or stove.  In the forests around where I lived, downed trees were often available to be cut up for firewood with the appropriate permits.  A chain saw could also be used to clear a downed tree on the road.  Often an industrious group of drivers could clear a road before the official highway maintenance people got there.  Every truck also had something called a "come-along," which was a type of pulley that one used if one got stuck in the mud or in a river somewhere, one could wrap a chain around a tree, attach it to the come-along, and pull themselves out of their predicament.

In a town full of full to partial DIYers, it often meant that one didn't necessarily need to go to the stores to buy things.  Chances are that someone had a needed item if you looked around carefully enough.  My father had a barn, where he kept a lot of stuff.  A wide range of tools, some useful, some not, for various purposes.  Lumber, for that room he was going to redo.  Nuts, bolts, nails and screws that he had saved from various other projects that might come in handy.  Old appliances that just might be able to be fixed some day.  The barn was probably a chemical nightmare, as he kept old cans of paint well past the time that they were useful.  Seeds for gardening that he had saved over the years.  Various bits of metal.  My father was only a partial DIYer, and didn't have a lot of skills in fix-it or repair or metalworking, but yet he kept these things just in case they were needed.

My next door neighbor, Mr. Cleary, was more skilled in a lot of things, and his barn showed it.  He was skilled in auto mechanics, and had all but the most heavy equipment needed to repair his family's cars.  If he ever needed to put the car up in the air, he knew a few people who had the lifts to allow him to do that.

And, like LHM describes about Lake Winnipesaukee, I too often saw people hauling things around in their trucks - old rusty things that didn't seem like they would have a purpose, but they did.  If it was an old metal frame of something, barely recognizable as former office shelving, for instance, it could be put to use for something.  Perhaps it could be reconfigured into a rack to hold stuff in the barn, or a planter for out in the garden.  Old appliances could be scavenged for parts that might fit into newer appliances that with a twist here and a poke there could be made to run for another few years.  Old cars, sitting in yards, could either be repaired with scavenged parts from other vehicles or serve as parts supplies themselves, donating their innards like people donate kidneys, so that other cars might live longer.  If anything was thrown away, it was because it either had no conceived further use or because it had been scavenged for everything that it was worth.

One of the most popular radio shows on our local radio station was the Swap Shop.  People called in to Ellie, the host, and said what they were looking for.  Others would call in and announce what they had.  Sometimes they were selling, sometimes they were willing to trade.  But it was another indication that the store was often the last step in the chain to finding something one needed.

I make it sound like our town, and perhaps other rural areas around the country, were filled with hoarders.  Unlike hoarders, who collect for no discernible purpose other than their obsession, there was a purpose in the collection of things.  They served purposes and, since my parents' generation grew up in the Great Depression, there was perhaps a drive to wring all possible usefulness out of every item they purchased and, if someone else could use what they couldn't, to make sure that it was available to them when needed.  It stands in stark contrast to today, where we are used to things working until they die, and then they are thrown away and another cheap model is bought.  Every town used to have a few shops where appliances were fixed, even small appliances like toasters.  Now, a toaster dies and we just run to Wal Mart and pick up another.

In a month or so, I will go back to my hometown to visit my mom.  I'll hear and see her neighbor, with his garage and shed, working on some piece of equipment that needs repair.  I'll see the pickup trucks with their chain saws and their gun racks and come-alongs, many perhaps more modern looking but with the same accessories as yesteryear.  And, I'll take another stroll through my dad's barn, where many of the things that he left still sit, waiting for their new purpose to be discovered.

Musical Interlude

In the spirit of what they are now calling the DIY generation, Debbie Harry teamed up with punk rockers Rachelle Garniez and Palmyra Delran on a song called Do It Yourself.  The song aims to encourage kids to learn about doing things on their own.  The song can be found on the album KinderAngst.

And of course, it wouldn't be complete without a song about pickup trucks.  Would you believe that most of the songs about pickup trucks are in the country music genre?  Here is legendary Texas artist Jerry Jeff Walker singing his poignant Pickup Truck Song.

If you want to know more about Lake Winnipesaukee

Lake Winnipesaukee.net
Lake Winnipesaukee Museum
Lake Winnipesaukee Travel Guide
New Hampshire Lakes Region Tourism Association: Lake Winnipesaukee
Wikipedia: Lake Winnipesaukee
Winnipesaukee.com

Next up:  Melvin Village, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: West Canaan, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

In West Canaan, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) remarks on the disappearing water dams and turbines that powered the factories of yesterday.  Of course, I can't let an opportunity go by for talking about an alternative energy idea I had, and more.  To see where you too can eat and get gas, go to the map.

Book Quote

"Near West Canaan, I stopped at Al's Steamed Dogs & Filling Station.  A hand-painted sign: EAT HERE AND GET GAS.  Al's was closed.  The sky darkened, a shower doused the road and cooled things in the White Mountains.  The villages seemed to seep down the slopes to settle in the valleys along streams where people of another time built multiwindowed stone and brick factories and mills.  Most of the old buildings and mill dams had been done in by cheap electric power and centralized industry.  But there was talk of again tapping the unused energy in the New England streams with small, computer-designed turbines."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

EAT HERE & GET GAS! This is the actual sign that William Least Heat-Moon saw in West Canaan, New Hampshire. Photo by "kaszeta" and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host site.West Canaan, New Hampshire

I thought I had a great idea once.  I believe that I was driving somewhere out in a very rural area; perhaps it was Texas sometime in the 90s when I lived there.  I noticed that there were a lot of telephone and utility poles out there on these vast, windy plains.  That in itself didn't catch me, until I also noticed all the farms and homesteads that had windmills on their property.

Some of the windmills were really, really old.  You've probably seen them.  They are the wooden or galvanized many-rotored windmills that were used primarily for pumping water.  Many of them came from a kit, ordered at one time from a Sears catalogue.  The really old ones were made from wood, but a number of them that I saw were often Aermotor metal windmills.  In doing some background for this post, I began to understand that there was fierce competition in the windmill industry until eventually, Aermotor became the only producer of windmills in America with a design that so combined efficiency and effectiveness with price that it has basically remained unchanged since its first unveiling in 1888.

Basically, I saw all these windmills on properties throughout rural areas.  I saw the vast windy plains.  I saw telephone poles along roadsides, train tracks and other places perhaps serving their function of holding wires but nothing else.  My mind then thought about all the advances made in technology, on one hand, and the continual problem we were having in breaking ourselves of fossil fuel consumption.  While it is imperative that we develop alternative energies, fossil fuels (and their pollution and climate changing effects) are just too cheap.  But, why couldn't someone do something that might be cheap on a small scale?  I thought of the idea of parallel computing, in which each computer in an array gets a piece of a task rather than giving the whole task to one computer.  Why couldn't we do that with energy, I wondered?

So, my brilliant and innovative idea was this - take all the utility poles in vast, windswept and unpopulated areas, and put a small windmill on each.  These windmills would generate a little power, not much, but with the millions of telephone and utility poles out there, I speculated, each little bit of power fed into the grid, magnified by millions, might create a significant source of energy.  Wind is variable, but even when some areas are not windy, other areas would be, thus creating a continual source of energy.  All it would take is a small windmill on each pole and a way of feeding it into the grid.  At that I got stuck, because I'm not an electrical engineer.

After checking The Google, I have discovered that I'm not the only person to have such an idea.  There are a lot of people who have speculated that use could be made of the existing utility poles and telephone poles to create wind power.  Here's one discussion, and another, and still a third.  And there seems to be just as many people out there that are not optimistic about the idea.  There are questions about mechanical feasibility, questions about windmill size and height needed, questions about who owns the utility poles and if those owners would allow these motors to be installed.  But, I still think my idea could be done.  The term for them, evidently, is micro-windmills.  If one day you see them, remember the idea was mine first!

Why am I tilting at windmills, in a manner of speaking?  I'm following up on LHM's statement about cheap energy and industrialization leading to the decline of use of factory mill dams.  In the days before widespread power and cheap access to sources of combustible fuels, the engines of industry were all natural and, for the most part, clean.  Dams and water spilling over and through them provided the power needed to turn equipment.  Water wheels, pushed around and around by constant stream current, converted water energy into mechanical energy.

It wasn't until coal came into widespread use as a fuel whose combustion turned water into steam that could power new and more efficient machinery for production did the water wheel become quaint in its obsolescence.  And in some ways, we have been paying for our industry ever since.  From the environmental in the form of air and water pollution and climate change, to the social in the form of increased expectation of productivity and work polluting our calendars, we've turned our industry into expectations, and those expectations will make it difficult to go back to a simpler time when the power supply was either ourselves, or the simple things that wind and water could give us.

Yet, I'm afraid that is what we might have to do.  Fossil fuels are finite, and are damaging the earth as currently used.  At some point, the supply of fossil fuels will begin to decrease.  The potential for active solar energy is clearly abundant, but we've yet to harness it in an manner effective for running industry.  We've dammed pretty much every formerly wild river with hydroelectric potential to wring as much power out of them as possible.  Some speculate that tidal action or ocean currents will be able to supply a significant source of hydroelectricity, but those innovations are still dreams.  Wind energy is being utilized efficiently in places, but so far involves a significant investment in large wind turbines and land in wind corridors.  There are other even more radical ideas out there, such as clean fusion energy, but they are still unreachable.

So why can't we just put a few million micro-windmills on telephone and utility poles to help solve our energy and pollution problems?  I've yet to see a definitive answer that we absolutely cannot.  It seems to me that it requires a will, not a fallback on the old excuse that petroleum is cheap and wind too expensive.  As I write this, scientists around the world are trumpeting the seeming discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle which will allow us to explain all matter in the universe.  A huge amount of effort and energy, as well as many billions of dollars, was put into discovering the Higgs boson.  Why can't we put the same amount of, excuse the term, energy into exploring a radical, but possibly beneficial, way of powering our future?

But, I guess I'm just a dreamer.  Now if we could only convert the gas we get from eating bad road food to useful energy, we'd be getting somewhere.

Musical Interlude

A couple of windmills songs.  First up - Toad the Wet Sprocket with their song Windmills.

Second, Sting sings Windmills of Your Mind.  I almost put the Dusty Springfield version on this post, but decided I liked how Sting does it better.

If you want to know more about West Canaan or Canaan

Old newspaper article about a train wreck in West Canaan
Town of Canaan
Wikipedia: Canaan

Next up:  Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: Hanover, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

As we wander aimlessly around the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), we find ourselves embroiled in a mascot controversy.  Actually, thirty years ago, the sports team mascot controversy was just getting started.  Now, a number of teams have taken action to redress concerns, but the controversy is still present.  I'll give my own perspective, such as it is.  To find out where Hanover lies, try not to create any waves when you look at the map.

Book Quote

"....then over the Connecticut River and into Hanover, New Hampshire....

"I killed off most the day by wandering around the Dartmouth campus.  The Reverend Eleazar Wheelock founded the college with his own library and a log hut in the woods and a goal of providing 'for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing, and all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing Children of Pagans.'  The Dartmouth motto reflects its origin: Vox clamantis in deserto.  But now the voice crying in the (semi)wilderness was that of the tribal Americans who comprised one percent of the enrollment and who were decrying the unofficial nickname of the athletic teams - the Indians - as well as the 'Scalp 'em' cheers, the faculty dining room murals depicting Indians in various states of carousal and a popular rally song....As best I could tell, the students, faculty, and administration would gladly put the Indian rah-rah to rest by using the other nickname, 'The Green.'  But alums - there was the problem.  They might tolerate women graduates, but to give up their official Wah-hoo-wah!, that was too much.  And so the murals got carefully boarded over but not taken down."

Blue Highways:  Part 8, Chapter 10

Dartmouth College main hall. Photo by Dylan (kane5187) and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.Hanover, New Hampshire

When I was young, I didn't think much about sports team names. I grew up north of San Francisco, and I think I was seven when I first remember having any interest in sports. It was the holidays, and we were over at my aunt and uncle's place for Christmas dinner. Before dinner, my father and uncles were watching a football game, and as I sat with them, I asked questions about the game and the teams. The game was between the Baltimore Colts and the Miami Dolphins. I asked everyone who would win, and everyone unanimously agreed that the Colts would win. So I decided to cheer on the Dolphins. Dolphins were much more exciting than colts, at least to my young mind. Despite everyone's predictions, my Dolphins won the game. I think one of my uncles bet me a dollar, which of course I wouldn't have been able to pay, so it's a good thing I won! For a brief time in my young life, the Dolphins became my favorite team.

My real passion became Los Angeles teams, which was odd for a kid who grew up nearer San Francisco, but I guess I had to be different. The San Francisco teams in the seventies were never very good, anyway. I suppose I might have been a fan of the Oakland teams, but they never appealed to me either. No, it was the Rams, Lakers and Dodgers that provided excitement. But by far, I always looked forward to football season. I idolized the Rams, and each year it seemed they were picked to win it all, and each year my hopes would be dashed by the hated Minnesota Vikings or the even
more hated Dallas Cowboys. 

Here's how the scenario would play out. Always an early December playoff game, and always with the Rams in the lead in the fourth quarter. It always seemed like the Vikings or the Cowboys would be pinned back deep on third down. The Rams defensive line would swarm, and Fran Tarkenton or Roger Staubach would somehow manage to avoid the pressure - Tarkenton by scrambling or Staubach by stepping up in the pocket and ducking a sure tackle - and then Tarkenton/Staubach would throw a perfect bomb down the sideline to a streaking receiver who had managed to just slip behind the defender. The receiver would catch the ball in stride, and the game was over, just like that. Minnesota would go on to lose the Super Bowl, and even more infuriatingly, Dallas might actually win it, and I was always left with next year. I didn't see my Rams even make it to the Super Bowl until 1980, where they lost an uncharacteristically thrilling game (for a Super Bowl) to the Pittsburgh Steelers, for whom NFL championships were a matter of course, like eating or brushing teeth. Later, the Rams moved to St. Louis, and my love affair with them ended.

I later learned how the Rams and Lakers got their names.  I learned that the Rams originally came from Cleveland, though I never knew until doing some background for this post that they were named in honor of Fordham University's football team.  The Lakers originally came from Minneapolis, and were named after the "10,000 lakes" of Minnesota.  Of course the Dodgers came originally from Brooklyn, and was named because Brooklyn residents were adept at dodging trolley cars.

Since I hated the Cowboys (whose team name is self-explanatory) so much, I constantly rooted for teams that played against them, especially their hated rivals the Washington Redskins.  Originally called the Boston Braves, the team became the Boston Redskins after they began playing at Fenway Park and they kept the name upon moving to Washington. I grew up in a small, working class and fairly unsophisticated town, and  I didn't really think of the name or the logo as being an issue. Occasionally, if I listened to the radio and the Oakland A's (Athletics) were playing, I might catch a game where the opponent was the Cleveland Indians.  I've learned that the Indians got their name partly because an early incarnation of the team, the Cleveland Spiders, had a Native American player and were often informally called the "Indians" during his playing time there, and partly because it was a play on the name of the baseball Boston Braves.  The symbolism and what it might mean to others simply never crossed my mind. It wasn't until I was older and working in social justice initiatives that I learned of the intense anger that many Native Americans had for this appropriation and perceived disrespect toward their cultures and peoples. To be honest, I didn't originally think it a valid issue. After all, with the poverty, alcoholism, drug use, and other social problems plaguing Native societies, I reasoned, weren't there better things to focus on?

As I'm older, with a little more experience and education behind me, I have come to understand the importance of symbolism. I'm sure that those who named the Redskins were simply looking for a name that would inspire fans and indicate the strength and ferocity necessary for a good football team. However, I have trouble explaining the caricature of the Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo, which regardless of the intent is problematic. Also, regardless of the intent, such names, emblems and logos play into stereotypes that are often inaccurate and demeaning.  Perhaps Irish people do not object to names like the Boston Celtics or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (which also uses an emblem of a leprechaun in a fighting pose), but should it be right to use stereotypes? I wonder if a team decided to call itself the Africans, with a "Sambo" character as a logo, if that would be seen as more offensive than Chief Wahoo. Somehow, I think it would, even though for practical purposes, the demeaning nature of the names and logos would be roughly the same.

In response to the Native American mascot controversy, an intramural team of Native Americans, Latinos and some whites at the University of Northern Colorado adopted the name of the Fightin' Whites (with the slogan "Everything is Going to be All White!). Though the name failed to achieve the recognition they wanted and instead became a sought-after t-shirt slogan, I wonder if it's the wave of the future.  If whites become a minority someday, will we see team names like the Caucasians, Palefaces, or Wacicu - or stereotype-based names like Fat Couch Potatoes or Corporate CEOs?

In the meantime, while there are many schools with indigenous nicknames, some colleges and universities, to the dismay of some of their alumni, are giving up their logos and nicknames for other, less controversial ones. My wife's alma mater, Marquette University, changed its mascot from the Warriors, with a Indian logo, to the Golden Eagles. The alumni eventually got over it, because ultimately the sports team, and identification with the university, meant more than the nickname.  Other schools, from the kindergarten level up through the university level, have changed their names either at the request of tribes or, in the case of universities, through pressure from the NCAA. But we still see, in some big level college sports and at the professional sports level, sights such as mascots in native dress or and fans in face paint doing a war cry and tomahawk chop, as well as logos that depict Native Americans in stereotypical fashion, even if it is meant respectfully.  All this will guarantee that this controversy will remain.  To some, such names, mascots and logos will remain a  tremendous insult on indigenous peoples and cultures. 

At Dartmouth, as referenced in LHM's quote, the official team name remains the Big Green, and the school has held firm despite continuing calls from some alumni, students and the conservative student newspaper to return the name to the Indians.  And, despite the low historical enrollment of Native Americans at Dartmouth, it has graduated more Native Americans than the other Ivy League schools combined, some 700 since 1970.

Musical Interlude

Every first Saturday of the month, the programmers of the Voces Feministas show on KUNM, our local public radio show, play this song, No No Keshagesh by Buffy Ste. Marie, as their opening song.  When I saw Ms. St. Marie perform, she explained that "Keshagesh" is a Cree term for a puppy that wants more than its own share.  I think that describes how Native Americans have felt that their lands, their symbols and even their identities have been appropriated for centuries by multiple waves of invaders.

And here's only my second repeated song of the Blue Highways series, but it fits really well.  Jim Thorpe's Blues, by Terri Hendrix, references Jim Thorpe, an amazing Native American Olympian and athlete in multiple sports.

If you want to know more about Hanover

TheDartmouth (college newspaper)
Dartmouth College
Hanover Area Chamber of Commerce
Town of Hanover
Wikipedia: Hanover

Next up: West Canaan, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: Quechee Gorge, Vermont

Unfolding the Map

Stand on the edge of the rift in the earth.  Feel the wind racing up the sides of the gorge and blowing on your face.  If you dare, look down to the bottom, 165 feet below.  While William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) crosses the bridge over the gorge and moves on into New Hampshire, we'll stop for a moment and think a little about the symbolism of gorges and things that disappear into the earth.  To learn where you might make friends in low places, make a descent to the map.

Book Quote

"....The road crossed Quechee Gorge, an unexpected hundred-sixty-five-foot-deep sluice cut through stony flanks of the mountain; a couple clutched the bridge railing as they uneasily peered down into the gloom."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

In the Quechee Gorge downstream of the Quechee Gorge Bridge looking back. Photo by "AustinMN" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Quechee Gorge, Vermont

As you may have gathered in previous posts, I love mountains.  Thrusting out of the earth with craggy and intensely defined features as in most young mountains, or gently rising in tree covered glory, like many older mountains, I've always found them to be metaphors and reminders.  They are metaphors of barriers in our lives, and at the same time of the heights we can reach.  They remind us of how small we are in a large world and, to a greater extent, in our universe.  They also have metaphorically served as gateways to heaven - a great number of the gods that our human cultures have created have either lived on top of mountains, or going up a mountain was the way to reach them.  Think of the Greek gods that live on Mount Olympus, or Moses climbing the mountain to receive the commandments of God.   There is a continuing trope in literature and comics about the man scrambling up the side of the mountain to find truth.  I recently watched the first movie in the latest series of Batman movies, Batman Begins, and Bruce Wayne has to scale a mountain to reach the monastery where his training will begin and the unveiling of his mission in life will occur.

But this post is about gorges, the exact opposites of mountains.  In fact, gorges can be thought of as hills or mountains in reverse.  They sink into the earth, sometimes thousands of feet, so that one standing on the edge of a gorge might get a sense of vertigo.  To ascend a mountain takes effort, desire and hard work.  To descend a gorge is deceptively easy and, in some cases might be totally unexpected if one falls off the rim!

Whereas mountains are metaphors for our goals, and as barriers calling forth our best efforts to overcome, gorges seem, to me at least, to have much darker meanings.  I've been trying to think of literature that I've read where paths that sink into the earth have had a positive connotation.  It is down in the earth where some of our deepest, darkest fears and horrors have lurked, at least in our cultural sensibilities.  If mountains reach toward heaven and take us closer to God or the gods, gorges, caves and other places that take us into the earth take us toward places that we fear - the deepest recesses of our minds and psyches, Hell, and ultimately death.  Think of Dante descending into the Inferno, Frodo swallowed up in the Mines of Moria, or Orpheus heading into Hades.  Where the earth cracks, darkness is usually present.

This might be overdoing it a bit for a gorge like Quechee.  After all, the pictures I've seen of the Quechee Gorge show a beautiful river carving a slice in the rocks amid trees.  But there are deeper gorges, which but for the intrepid drive of humans might be inaccessible today.  The Hells Canyon on the Snake River, the deepest gorge on Earth, has a wonderful story attached to it about how it was created, combining mountains and gorges and their meanings.  The Grand Canyon was, for all intents and purposes not fully explored until relatively recently in human history.  And talk about barriers - if mountains are frustrating at times until one finds a pass through them, gorges can often be impassable.  I related in a previous post how the Spanish explorers, upon finding the Grand Canyon, almost found the boundary of their explorations and had to make herculean efforts to cross it.  Of all the gorges in the world, the Grand Canyon is still the gorge where the most people die each year (mostly due to human ignorance, ineptitude or the unnecessary taking of risks).

The lowest point on Earth lies in a gorge under the ocean.  The Mariana Trench is a place of fascination to scientific explorers, and a place where, for the rest of us, creatures live that appear to be drawn from our most horrible dreams.  The deepest gorge in our solar system lies in a place that we haven't even visited yet - Mars.  The Valles Marineris puts the Grand Canyon to shame, with a depth of up to four miles and a length that is much longer.  It is interesting that Mars, a future goal of exploration by humans, has all of the metaphors discussed here in gigantic scale - the deepest gorge and the highest mountain (Olympus Mons) yet discovered in the solar system.  It seems to embody, in one planet, our hopes as a species, the barriers and obstacles that await us, the heights that we can reach and the depths in which our fears reside.

It's taken me a while to like gorges.  As I mentioned above, I was always drawn to mountains.  Frankly, I get vertigo looking from great heights straight downward.  On a recent visit to the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico, which on approach is barely noticeable until one is right on top of it, I could barely look down from the bridge to the river more than 600 feet below.  Yet standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, which is immensely bigger, I had a false sense security rather than seeing the danger, as if what I was looking at was somehow less imposing because it didn't seem real.  It was beautiful, almost as if I was looking at a painting of the Grand Canyon rather than real life.  Some years ago, when I happened upon the New River Gorge in West Virginia, however, I was stunned by the beauty of the place and the thoughts that it brought to my head.  I even composed a piece of poetry standing at a viewing spot near its edge.  I now appreciate them for what they are, a part of the same geology that heaves up the mountains and in a way, their own metaphors for challenge and growth.

If gorges can be gateways to those things we fear, they are also passages to unknown places and discoveries that are wonderful and fulfilling.  When we look at mountains, we look at them as challenges to conquer.  We don't necessarily climb mountains to find out who or what is there, we climb the mountain because it is a mountain.  But for me, when I see a valley or a gorge or some other place slipping down beneath the earth, I wonder what or who is down there and what they might be doing.  I speculate on what sights might be seen there or wonders that might be uncovered.  I think about what the perspective might be from the bottom - whether it will be quieter or more calm below than up on top.  I've often heard that standing at great heights, people often feel drawn toward the edge and even over.  Perhaps this feeling that I have is the more benign version of that strange urge - in this case, an urge to climb down and discover.

I think about LHM's couple, standing on the edge and peering uneasily into the mist shrouded depths of the Quechee Gorge, and I understand the uneasy fascination of the deep places.  Life is not only about walking on the plains, but climbing to the high places and descending, at times, to the low places.  Whether climbing up, or slipping down, one is still assured of discovery, learning and growth.

Musical Interlude

I'm nothing if not tenacious.  In search for songs about gorges, I stumbled across this little thing called Scenic Gorges by Boats.  It's an interesting song, sort of catchy in a funny punk kind of way.  Not only that, but I figured out how to embed it from Grooveshark.  Enjoy!

Blue Highways: Mount Tom, Vermont

Unfolding the Map

In this post, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) spends a day on Mount Tom outside of Woodstock, Vermont, he seems a little distracted.  We'll reflect a little on the healing prospects of nature, and the double-edged sword of protecting oneself.  To find Mount Tom, let the map be your guide.

Book Quote

"I spent the day on Mount Tom.  Had I owned a ghost shirt, I'd have danced madly all over that mountain.  Instead, I tried to keep from looking inward, tried to reach outward, but, as Black Elk says, certain things among the shadows of a man's life do not have to be remembered - they remember themselves."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 9

Trail on Mount Tom near Woodstock, Vermont. Photo by "ikur" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Mount Tom, Vermont

If you ask me, LHM did this all backwards.  But first, a little back story that I didn't provide in the quote.  If you're joining for the first time as we follow Blue Highways, one of the reasons LHM took off on a trip around America is that his marriage fell apart.  At various points along the trip, he tried to talk with his estranged wife, who he named "The Cherokee."  In the passage preceding this quote, he wakes in Woodstock, Vermont from difficult dreams involving remarriage with her.  He spends the day on Mount Tom to clear his head and soothe his emotions, but by the end of the day when he is back in Woodstock he calls and has a frustrating talk with her which only serves to get him angry.

In my experience, nature is best experienced from a stable platform.  By that, I mean that if one is in an emotionally unstable state, the healing value of nature, of being in a calming, soothing environment like that of Mount Tom is hindered or muted.  It's not that nature wouldn't be able to calm and heal someone in that state, it's just that the healing forces of nature would have to work harder and would probably need to be applied repeatedly to have an effect.  A simple day outing would not suffice.

I think of myself when I have entered nature in an emotionally unstable state.  A few years ago, my wife and I went for an outing in the Tent Rocks, a geologically fascinating area near our home in New Mexico.  At the time, our marriage was troubled with many issues, and my mind was focused on those things.  We walked the trails of the Tent Rocks, through the hoodoos and fantastic geological formations created through volcanism, erosion and time.  I saw them, but I didn't really see them.  I was too preoccupied, my mind racing with potentials and possibilities and pitfalls.  Therefore, while being in the wilderness in an amazing place took me superficially from my everyday surroundings where all of my troubles and difficulties were stacking up, I didn't really absorb the Tent Rocks.  I saw but did not see.  I need to go back to see the Tent Rocks now that I am in a more stable emotional place.

It's not that LHM didn't try to calm his emotions.  He states that he tried to focus outward, rather than inward, but to paraphrase him, a man's shadows will manage to make themselves known.  In my experience again, those shadows seem to come when one is ungoing emotional unrest.  LHM makes reference his quote above to the ghost shirt, which to Native Americans were a protective garment.  The ghost shirts were adopted by many Native tribes in the late 1800s and were initially worn to protect the wearer from the certain doom, notably earthquakes, that were believed to be the punishment for the white invaders in North America.  However, some Natives believed that the ghost shirts would protect the wearer from the white man's bullets.  They didn't, as was proved at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890.  It is believed that the idea of the ghost shirts were adopted from Mormon temple garments that are supposed to protect the wearer from evil.  However, throughout history there have been many beliefs that the wearing of garments, or even the shedding of clothes, offered one protection.  One of the most interesting cases I've read is about General Butt Naked, in Liberia, who led his troops into battle while nude believing that it protected him from bullets.  He hasn't been proved wrong yet, as he is still alive!  Although I think that his butt-naked battle days are over. 

However, the ghost shirts and other forms of protection are all focused on dangers from without.  How do you protect from the turmoil within?  If you are surrounded by a cloak of protection, such as a ghost shirt, a protective bubble ala Green Lantern, a safe room, or a Romulan or Klingon cloaking device, it doesn't actually mean that you are able to vanquish the doubt, madness or rebellion that can brew within the individual or individuals within the protective device.

Here we get back to LHM.  From my lofty perch thirty years in the future, I might have advised him to get his compulsive act of calling his ex-wife over with before he went up to Mount Tom.  He could have had his despairing, angry moment where he yelled and hit the telephone booth door.  After, a drive up to Mount Tom and it's clean air and forests would have helped calm him.  The views from the top of the mountain could have given him perspective.  Perhaps Black Elk's wisdom, "I did not know then how much was ended," would have come with less desolation and more inner peace.

But then again, I have been known to act exactly as LHM did.  Lucky for me, I have had access to good people who provide me that perspective, and the slightest bit of wisdom to know that should I need healing energy, calm and perspective, that I can always reach out to Nature.  In a week, I will be doing just that.  I will go camping for a weekend in New Mexico's Pecos Wilderness.  I will hike on mountain trails, take in the vistas, and observe wildlife going about its business in the moment.  I will watch my dog joyfully leap into the car, not caring for a moment where she's going but just happy to be going somewhere, and then her joy at being outside for an entire weekend.  For a few days, I will heal, and then come back to civilization, work, and relationships, put up some protective cloaks and live, taking the buffets to my psyche and soul that life brings, until I realize I need rejuvenation and peace again.

Musical Interlude

For the musical interlude, I am posting Protection.  Written by Bruce Springsteen for Donna Summer, who recently passed away, both of them recorded their own versions of the song, as well as a duet that has never been heard.  This version is a fan remix, putting these legendary musicians' voices together.

Addendum

At the risk of giving in to my own hubris, I once wrote a sonnet that sort of fits LHM's situation in this chapter.  Here's what LHM writes about his phone call to The Cherokee:

"By evening, my judgment had given way, and I called home.  I was talking fast, talking, talking, trying to find where we stood, how our chances were.  She talked.  No matter how we tried, our words - confounded - ran athwart and, as usual, we ended up at cross-purposes.  Neither of us knew where to go from there.  Nothing to do but hang up.  When I put the receiver down and heard the line ding dead, I tried to excuse the failure by thinking that nothing ever works out over a telephone."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 9

I wrote this sonnet after a similar experience with a girlfriend a long time ago, in the late 1980s.  It has similar themes to LHM's quote, including dancing, nature, a dead telephone line, and loss.  I humbly offer it to you here:

Autumn Thoughts
by Michael L. Hess

A click, and then the lifeless droning hum,
As I replaced the phone upon its hook;
I walked outside, into the setting sun,
And sat upon the porch to think and look.

A cavalcade of brightly colored leaves
Ran helter-skelter down the somber street,
Driven by a soft, yet forceful, breeze
That pushed them onward to an unknown fate.

How I wished that I could join them there,
And also dance away my lonely grief;
Until, with growing pain, I was aware
That life is but the wind, and I, a leaf.

I thought of love and loss, and thus entranced,
I ran into the street to join the dance.

If you want to know more about Mount Tom

Climbing Mount Tom
Hiking around Woodstock
Mount Tom
Mount Tom and the Pogue Trail

Next up:  Quechee Gorge, Vermont