Blue Highways: Franklin, West Virginia

Unfolding the Map

The New Year has begun, and William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) finds the power in a circle - the circle of his trip, the circle of life.  I will explore and reflect upon how our passages in seeming straight lines are really circles, and how this New Year is yet another segment on the circle of our own journeys through life.  To see where Franklin is located, please see the map. 

Book Quote

"After a small meal in the Ghost, I marked on a map the wandering circle of my journey.  From the heartland out and around.  A blue circle gone beyond itself.  'Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle,' Black Elk says.  'Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.  The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.'

"Then I saw a design.  There on the map, crudely, was the labyrinth of migration the old Hopis once cut in their desert stone.  For me, the migration had been to places and moments of glimpsed clarity.  Splendid gifts all."

Blue Highways: Chapter 10, Part 2

The Potomoc River in Franklin, West Virginia. Photo by Doctor Flowers and hosted at City-Data. Click on photo to go to host site.

Franklin, West Virginia

As we start this new year, with its promise of new beginnings and fresh starts, it is easy to look back at the trajectory that our lives have taken and reflect upon them.  In my previous Blue Highways post I did some of that reflection by examining the past year.  As one gets older, it becomes more commonplace to reflect on longer periods of time in the past.  As a child and young adult, my capacity for reflection beyond what I had experienced a day, or maybe a week at most, in the past was fairly limited.  As I have just reached the completion of my 49th circuit around the sun, I find that I am spending more time in reflection deeper into my past.

One of the themes of Blue Highways has been that of circles.  A person's journey through life has been described in the book as a series of setting out on journeys, and then circling back to the origin.  Nothing, it seems, ever is a simple trip from point to point.  Most of the time we set out somewhere, we return, giving our lives a circularity that we rarely notice.  We go to work, and then return.  We set out on shopping trips, and then come back home.  My sense is that if we mapped people's short and long journey's the result would resemble the drawings I did as a young person with Spirograph plastic wheels.

Circles so dominate our existence that we barely even think about it.  We live on a spherical planet that is essentially a series of circles increasing from infinitely small to the maximum diameter of our planet and then decreasing back to infinite smallness.  That planet rotates, meaning that we essentially make a complete circle once every 24 hours.  That sphere travels in a roughly circular orbit, with other spheres, around a spherical sun. The sun itself travels with other stars on the outer arm of a spiral galaxy in a circular path around the galaxy's center.  The universe itself may be spherical, originating in time and space at the center in a titanic explosion and expanding outward like a big bubble.

If we look at our journey through time, over the course of our lives, then once again we have a circle.  LHM quotes Black Elk, but Black Elk was not the first to notice this circularity.  The seasons, following a cycle determined by the circular travel of the earth around the sun, prescribe a rotation through time as fall changes to winter, winter goes to spring, and then spring turns to summer, and summer goes back to fall.  Life moves in a circle as well, with the smallest creatures serving as food for larger creatures, and so on up the food chain, until death makes even the largest creatures food for smaller creatures, and even some of the smallest living beings.  Water moves in a circular pattern as well, from oceans to rivers, streams and lakes and back to oceans - with some taking a side trip through our bodies before it is purified back through the ecosystem into the circle again.

Some of our earliest religious symbols were circles.  Life itself follows a circular pattern.  It is easy to see life as being a line from birth to death, but long before Black Elk spoke about life's circularity the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible warned people that "from dust we came and to dust we shall return."

If our life indeed prescribes a circle then it stands to reason that my past year is just one little stretch along the rim.  When I think about how my life might fit this model, I realize that all of the little circles of life that I have taken have still moved me forward.  My little circles to and from work and back home have worked toward moving me forward in my career, as well as helping me save resources that may lead to the purchase of a house in 2013.  My trips to and from the classes I have taught have given me a greater understanding of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, and will ensure better classes for my students in the future.  My writing in Littourati, while moving in a seemingly linear fashion through On the Road and Blue Highways, has taken me on a circular path between the past and the present, over and over, especially in my more reflective posts.

As LHM looks at the map of his journey, and you can also look at the whole map here, he realizes that his journey is not only circular but also resembles the circular maze of migration that is part of the Hopi mythology.  The Hopi believe that starting in the First World, and into the current Fourth World, the clans of humanity have continually set out, come back together, and then disbanded again over and over in a repeating pattern.  The sequence and cycle of togetherness and harmony followed by separation and discord seems to encompass most of our experience of life.  These past holidays, I noted how U.S. families, no matter how difficult their relations with each other, keep coming back together at certain times of the year and usually always around the Christmas holidays.  Sometimes these gatherings can be harmonious, at other times they can be full of dysfunction and pain.  Yet something keeps drawing us through that particular circle year after year.

I celebrate the circles in life, but realize that these circles will bring me forward through joy, and occasionally backwards through pain, melancholy and remembrance of things that I wish would stay in the past.  Yet I can't help but move forward.  When people have wished me a happy new year in the past few days, I thank them but am very aware that some of it will be happy, some of it will be sad, but all of it will move me forward on my own circular life journey.  And that is as it should be.

Musical Interlude

Rodney Crowell's song Dancin' Circles Round the Sun, encapsulates the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epictetus who argued that we should not worry about the things that we can't control.  When people try to exercise too much control over life, things get out of balance, and as we all know a circle out of balance, such as a wheel, can cause a bumpy ride.

If you want to know more about Franklin

Guide to Pendleton County
Wikipedia: Franklin

Next up: Judy Gap, Seneca Rocks and Elkins, West Virginia

Blue Highways: Stanardsville, Virginia

Unfolding the Map

At the close of 2012, I will use this post to reflect on the past year.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), toward the end of his trip and as he traveled through Stanardsville, reflected on what his trip had accomplished.  Usually we accomplish quite a lot that we don't give ourselves credit for, and overemphasize our failures and shortcomings.  Not this time, Littourati.  Not this time.  To the right is the Virginia State Seal, found on Wikimedia Commons.  To see where Stanardsville awaits the New Year, go to the map.

Book Quote

"I went up U.S. 33 until the rumple of hills became a long, bluish wall across the western sky.  On the other side of Stanardsville in the the Blue Ridge Mountains, I stopped in a glen and hiked along Swift Run, a fine rill of whirligigs and shiners, until I found a cool place for lunch.  Summer was a few days away, but the heat wasn't....

"....In a season on the blue roads, what had I accomplished?  I hadn't sailed the Atlantic in a washtub, or crossed the Gobi by goat cart, or bicycled to Cape Horn.  In my own country, I had gone out, had met, had shared.  I had stood as witness."

Blue Highways: Part 10, Chapter 2

Greene County Courthouse in Stanardsville, Virginia. Photo by Calvin Beale and posted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Stanardsville, Virginia

As I write this post, it is New Year's Eve 2012.  The time of year often entails a look forward at the coming year, and even resolutions for what one hopes to accomplish.  However, on New Year's Eve media often spends time looking back at the year's accomplishments, failures, events, and the people that have passed on.  We can see from the quote above that as LHM is the end of his own journey, he also takes a look behind him to tally up his own accomplishments on his travels.

It is curious that he begins with a list of those things that he didn't accomplish, and one could read this as his admission that his trip wasn't important.  After all, instead of crossing "the Gobi by goat cart," he went out.  Instead of bicycling "to Cape Horn," he met.  Rather than sailing "the Atlantic in a washtub," he shared.  Above all, he had "stood as witness."  To what?  To his country certainly, but also to himself.

As I look back at my own journey in this past year, not necessarily through space but definitely through time in the form of days that make up a year, I can ask myself the same questions.  What did I do?  And my list isn't that exciting.  I worked.  I made a trip or two.  I hung out with friends sometimes, and I spent a lot of time alone.  The three major accomplishments that I can list are the following: With a colleague, I got a paper published in a major political science journal; I wrote roughly 118 posts in Littourati for a word count of around 120,000 words; I made great strides in my own personal development through a combination of therapy and self-reflection.  I watched all the episodes of the old Star Trek.

I am currently reading a memoir of Istanbul by the great Turkish writer and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.  He identifies a melancholy, which he labels with the Turkish word huzun, that Turks collectively have when they consider Istanbul.  All around them are the reminders of the glories of the Ottoman Empire, in particular the crumbling houses and palaces of Ottoman princes.  Turks, after the last political remnants of the Ottoman Empire had been swept away under the Westernizing zeal of Ataturk, could not simply forget that they had once been a great civilization.  The reminders were there to see.  Sure, they could look forward to the accomplishments of a modern, Western and dynamic society.  Indeed, Turkey has positioned itself as an economic and political player in the 21st century.  But Pamuk points out that the melancholy weight of the past still hangs on the coattails of Turkish society.

As I look back on my last year, I could look at it with the same melancholic air, and in keeping with Pamuk's concept of huzun, I'm most likely not the only person who does this.  There were so many things I could have done.  What about those things that I might have accomplished.  I wanted, for example, to take up some sort of hobby, to learn how to bead necklaces and earrings for example, as a reflective and creative enterprise.  That didn't happen.  I had hoped to begin running again and didn't even begin.  I wished to even do some mundane activity, but very necessary, like organizing and cleaning our house.  I couldn't get a handle on it, and didn't even know where to begin.  I wanted to write more in my field of political science.  The list could go on and on if I let it.  And like Pamuk's Turkey, the weight of my past accomplishments as well as the expectations I had for myself weigh down my thoughts and create a thin veil that blurs the good that I did accomplish this past year.

It's very easy to get caught up in the "would haves," "should haves," and "could haves."  Doing so tempers the thoughts about the new year.  I have ceased making New Year's resolutions because I find that I just disappoint myself if I do so because I never complete them or give up on them.

As I close 2012, and get very close to finishing Blue Highways, it's easy to reflect back on the year and see the things that I didn't do that I wished I had.  It's easy to look back on my life and regret some things I've done, other things that I didn't do, and certainly all of those things that I could have done better.  At the same time, we often give short shrift to that which we accomplished, and those things we accomplished well.  I suppose that's human nature.  We often regret choices and actions taken, and pile up the dead weight of past glories and should-have-beens behind us.

It's true that I didn't achieve a lot of the goals that I set for myself.  But it's also true that I achieved other goals.  As I look back upon my 2012 journey, I realize that the most important thing is that I participated in the process of living.  I lived, not in the sense that I stayed alive but in the sense that I actively participated in life.  That participated included both the joys and the disappointments, the achievements and the failures.  Given the alternatives, I think my year went pretty well.

On this New Year's Eve, 2012, my wish for you, dear Littourati readers, is that you also truly lived in 2012, and will continue to do so in 2013 and beyond.  A very happy New Year to all of you!

Musical Interlude

Even though it's from 1988, and references that year, this song by Abba, Happy New Year, has lyrics that fit the post.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Stanardsville

Wikipedia: Stanardsville

Next up: Franklin, West Virginia

Littourati News: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

On this Christmas Eve as I write this, I hope that all of you travelers and Littourati out there have a wonderful holiday season.  Whether your travel is in the real physical world, or you are traveling through your thoughts and reflections as you partake in a piece of literature, I wish for continued happy journeys for you all.

Since this blog is presently with William Least Heat-Moon and Blue Highways in Louisiana Cajun country, I am embedding the video, below, of The Real Cajun Night Before Christmas.  Enjoy!

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a wonderful, wonderful New Year!

Michael L. Hess