Blue Highways: Leipsic, Delaware

Unfolding the Map

A bit of a wistful post this time, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) passes a lonely lighthouse, far from water, on the edge of a cornfield.  What can be more lonely than a lighthouse far from water?  I guess we'll find out.  To find Leipsic, follow the ghost light of the lighthouse to the map.

Book Quote

"Although I couldn't see the bay, I could smell it and see evidence of it in an old steel lighthouse implausibly at the edge of a cornfield near Leipsic."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 12

View of the Leipsic River near Leipsic, Delaware. Photo by "jgmskm" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go host site.

Leipsic, Delaware

Though I think I might have written this once before, I once ran across a DeMotivator poster that I thought was extremely funny. The poster showed a lone tree in the midst of a vast whiteness of snow.  The caption read "If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you aren't alone.  And yet you are alone.  So very alone."  Part of what I found funny, aside from the biting humor, is that at certain points in our lives we sometimes find ourselves alone.  Whether by choice, or by circumstances beyond our control, we may sometimes be in a place where suddenly it's only us.  There are others who are just as alone as we are, and yet we are the center of our universe so it really is only us.

I was reminded again by that feeling in LHM's quote.  By their very nature, lighthouses are lonely places.  They usually sit on the edge of points or headlands, far away from other buildings or dwellings, and their lugubrious lanterns shine in a sweeping arc out into the vast and lonely reaches of the ocean, sea or lake they sit by.  In days past, a lighthouse keeper lived out a lonely life in the lighthouse, tending the lantern in solitude, accompanied only by the sound of the gulls and the waves.

So what could be more lonely than a lighthouse left, by geology or environmental changes, sitting far inland?  And what a perfect metaphor...but for what?  Certainly for loneliness.  Perhaps for the erosion of usefulness.  Maybe the loss of meaningfulness, or the loss of purpose.

There are times when I feel like I could be such a lighthouse.

In another post, awhile back on our Blue Highways journey, I wrote about the difference between being alone and loneliness.  In that post, I spoke about how being alone is a state of being - either we are with other beings or not.  It may be by choice, as when I decide to go for a hike in the mountains to get away as much as possible from other people, or spend some time reading alone in a room in the house.  Or it may be because we just find ourselves where other people aren't, and we can either choose to stay there or go in search of people.

But loneliness is a different matter.  Loneliness is a state of mind.  One can feel lonely in a crowd.  One can feel lonely by themselves.  It's a perception, and not based on the physical reality of place.  Certainly there have been times that I've felt lonely.  It's usually when I'm troubled by something, or I've done something that has placed me in some sort of bind.  In that case, my feeling of being alone is also a symptom of my loneliness.

Of the two, I think that loneliness would be the worst.  One can easily stop being alone by finding others.  One must change a state of mind to stop feeling lonely.  From experience, that can be very hard.  And for some, it becomes chronic and depressive, and can lead to inner turmoil, pain, hurt and sometimes even tragedy.  I try to avoid feelings of loneliness as much as possible.

I think that in his long Blue Highways journey LHM struggled at times with loneliness, especially when thinking about his estranged wife.  In that way, the lighthouse serves as an apt symbol.  A working lighthouse may sit alone on a headline, but its light shines and it is working, occupied with its sole duty of keeping ships off the rocks (I realize I'm anthropomorphizing lighthouses here, but go with me for a minute).  However, a non-working lighthouse, sitting inexplicably inland has lost its purpose.  It is there alone, without a reason for being.  To me, that is the epitomy of loneliness.  As LHM gets into the last stretch of his trip, he might be able to look at that lighthouse and see a bit of his former self in it.  He started his trip in loneliness after his break up, but throughout the trip, his loneliness turned into an exercise of learning to be alone.  He was the lonely lighthouse, and now he is something else.  Perhaps he is alone, but he is not lonely.

But I ask you to think about the lonely lighthouses you have encountered in your life.  How many times have you found yourself without a purpose, vision, or ability to break out of the lonely straights you've found yourself in.  Have you ever known someone in that position?  Perhaps a loved one, or an older person at the end of their life who has lost most of the people they've known and loved?  Perhaps a friend who is going through a difficult time, and feels as if there is nobody there for them?

I think that, unfortunately, there are many lonely lighthouses in our society and world.  We may not be able to control the changes that sometimes make us temporarily alone in the world, and sometimes we simply want to be alone.  But loneliness is another matter, and when we lonely it often seems like we sit like an abandoned lighthouse, dark and lifeless, far away from the object of our purpose with no hope of ever reviving it.  When that is our state of mind, perhaps we need another lighthouse to guide us - a purpose or a person - who can pull us out of the loneliness.

Musical Interlude

The most well-known song about lighthouses is probably James Taylor's Lighthouse.  It is a very melancholy and nice song that captures a little of the loneliness of the lighthouse.

Here's another nice song, Lighthouse by The Waifs.

If you want to know more about Leipsic

Delawaretoday.com: Leipsic
Wikipedia: Leipsic

Next up: Dover, Delaware

Blue Highways: Ubly and Port Huron, Michigan

Unfolding the Map

After traveling through Ubly and arriving at Port Huron, Michigan, we come to another crossroads where William Least Heat-Moon has to make a choice.  While fate isn't riding on his choice this time, the symbolism of the crossroads means that sometime, somewhere, we all reach an intersection and must make choices that do have real significance in our lives.  To find this intersection, take your soul to the map, and if someone is there with a contract for you to sign, you'd best resist the temptation.

Book Quote

"...so I headed east through Ubly, then down the edge of the Thumb, past more shoreline houses, to Port Huron....

"I had to decide. Either the eastward route through Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland, or it was a shorter northeast job through Canada...."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1

Port Huron bridges at night. Photo by Suzanne and hosted at City Data. Click on photo to go to host site.Ubly and Port Huron, Michigan

This is a difficult post.  It's hard when LHM just mentions a place without any kind of description.  Ubly and Port Huron, both possibly nice places (I've never been to either), are just glossed over as he tries to decide his next route.

One of life's little crossroads confronts LHM in this quote.  Crossroads are a very good symbol for all choices in life.  One can face literal crossroads, like LHM, in which he has to decide whether to take one route over another.  Or one can face a metaphorical crossroads, in which choices need to be made.  Either way, there are often unknowns that will be faced by taking one route over another.  Sometimes, if taking one way or the other leads to knowns, the choices might still not be clear.  One way may be better than another.  One way may be more difficult.  The supposedly easy way might have traps and snares we aren't aware of.

In LHM's case, it's a simple choice of moving through Canada or the US.  I've faced that choice before on driving trips from Milwaukee to the East Coast, depending on which way I've traveled.  Sometimes, I would take a route along Interstate 80 through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  However, if I found myself in Detroit, I would have to make the same choice LHM did.  Do I head around Lake Erie to the south and go back to I-80 or go through Toledo and Cleveland?  Or do I just cross the river at Detroit into Canada and head across to western New York north of Lake Erie?  Often the shortest distance was through Canada.

If you're LHM, your choice might be based mostly on this factor.  You're writing a book about blue highways - those smaller, two-lane highways that are rarely traveled.  You're also trying to avoid big cities, and the southern route after Port Huron lies through Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland - all pretty major cities.  Canada would seem pretty attractive, and it would cut time off your trip.

Something that's pretty interesting, however is that by doing so LHM will completely avoid Ohio.  He missed Ohio the first time around, and if he chooses to go through Canada, he'll miss it again.  Ohio is known as "the heart of it all," but LHM's choices will cause him to miss the heart by traveling outside the "body" that is the U.S.

In reality, then, LHM's choices will have an effect on his trip.  He will either have to negotiate large cities or go out of his way to avoid them, or he will cut off a part of the United States in favor of speed and a little bit of a foreign country.

Physically then, a crossroads is a literal intersection.  Most of us don't really pay attention to them.  We pass intersections all the time.  On a city street, I never think about all the intersections I pass.  I usually have a place in mind to go to and a route mapped out in my head.  But think about it - if I have a hesitation, or I if I don't really know where I'm going, an intersection becomes much more interesting and much more dangerous.  My choice might lead to riches or ruin.

In a metaphorical sense, the crossroads has come to symbolize an intersection not only in the physical realm, but also a place between worlds.  This place can be natural, supernatural, paranormal, or anything we subscribe to.  I was just watching a Twilight Zone episode a couple of weeks prior, entitled Little Girl Lost, in which an intersection of dimensions causes a little girl who tumbles out of bed to disappear through a doorway into a different world.  That intersection is a crossroads.

There is some potential danger involved with the crossroads.  Some Christian superstitions have the Devil appearing to people at the crossroads at midnight.  Borrowing from West African and voodoo tradition, Papa Legba shows up at the crossroads.  The danger from these meetings is that a deal may be struck where one sells one's soul for something one wants.

A famous story is involves the bluesman Robert Johnson.  He supposedly was a mediocre bluesman until one night he met the Devil at the crossroads, and exchanged his soul for a better guitar.  From then on, the legend goes, he was the best blues player alive until his untimely death by poisoning at the age of 27.  Hear a wonderful radio show, called Radiolab, explore the legend of Robert Johnson:

Another famous story about crossroads involves Oedipus, whose tragic fate began at the intersection of three roads when killed his father.  This act, very symbolic in that he could have chosen another metaphorical life road, led to his marriage to his mother and eventually his downfall and blindness.  Contrast this with Heracles, who stood at the crossroads and had to choose between Pleasure and a life of ease, or Virtue and a life of hardship and immortality.  The ever-so-good Heracles chose Virtue.  How many of us would do the same?

From these stories, it can be see that danger can lurk at the crossroads, but also hope.  The Christian symbolism of the cross represents, of course, martyrdom but also hope and resurrection.  I've made choices at my own life's crossroads, and sometimes have chosen the wrong way and have paid dearly for my choice.  At other times, I've heeded my choices and chosen wisely, and have benefitted.  The next time you come to an intersection, treat it with some respect.  After all, it may not seem to be representative of anything, until you realize that every choice you've ever made, easy and difficult alike, as come at an intersection of paths.

Musical Interlude

As mentioned above, the legend of Robert Johnson is such that the crossroads, the devil and his amazing blues guitar playing is the stuff of legend.  Enjoy the Crossroads Blues by this master of the Delta blues.

If you want to know more about Ubly and Port Huron

City of Port Huron
Port Huron Museum
Port Huron Times Herald (newspaper)
Village of Ubly
Wikipedia: Port Huron
Wikipedia: Ubly

Next up:  Sarnia, Ontario

Blue Highways: Umatilla, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

For the first time since we started traveling with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), we go back into a state that we've already visited.  Okay, so a technicality might be when we passed through the Navajo and Hopi reservations from Arizona and back into Arizona, but the reservations aren't really carved out as separate states.  In my mind, then, this is a first and I attach to it some symbolic qualities of a new beginning in William Least Heat-Moon's journey, especially since he had been so emotionally low in Oregon before.  Where does Umatilla fit in the geography of the journey, take a look at the map!

Book Quote

"Across the Columbia at Umatilla, Oregon, and up the great bend of river into country where sage grew taller than men."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 10

From McNary Dam Overlook in Umatilla, Oregon. Interstate 82 bridges over the Columbia River in foreground, and Mount Adams in the background. Photo at the Columbia River-A Photographic Journey site. Click on photo to go to host page.

Umatilla, Oregon

Here is a first for LHM's journey in Blue Highways.  In the nearly 200 places that we've visited so far, he has never doubled back into a state after leaving it.  He may have meandered, and he may have wandered, but he has pretty much kept himself moving straight through states, seeing some of what they have, and then moving on without a backward glance.

So why does he dip down into Oregon again, crossing the border at Umatilla (pronounced yoo-ma-till-a - I live in a Southwest border state and my inclination is to pronounce it ooh-ma-tee-ya)) and then going up the south and east side of the Columbia River?

A simple answer is that it's where the road has taken him.  If you look at the map of the area, the road he has been driving upon in Washington, state route 14, ends at Interstate 82 across the river from Umatilla.  He evidently decided to cross the river on the interstate, and then pick up the Columbia River Highway (US 730) to continue his drive along a blue highway.

He also has tended, whenever possible, to avoid interstates.  An alternative route might have taken him up Interstate 82 to Kennewick, where he could have then taken US 395 across the river and then started making his way east on US 12 from there.  But he chose not to.  Instead, he dips back into Oregon.

I don't put a lot of stock into this, but just go with me for a minute here as I look at some possible symbolism of this return to Oregon.  It may be a bunch of crap, but all of my posts are my own interpretations of what I'm reading so far, so I can go out on a limb once in a while, like I have a few times in my posts.

Symbolically, it seems as if Oregon was a difficult state for LHM.  Really, beginning in California, he had some despair and began questioning why he undertook this journey.  He began to perceive life and our travels in it as an unending circle that just keeps bringing us back to the same point.  He didn't really see the utility of that, especially since that same point always seemed to be a low point.  As he moved up through Oregon, these feelings became more intense.  In Corvallis, Oregon he reached his nadir.  Sitting in Ghost Dancing, while it rained for days, he called his wife and she didn't want to talk to him.  At that point, he decides he wants to see "what the hell is next."  He continues to the coast of Oregon where Lewis and Clark reached the end point of their westward journey, and that association with the explorers seems to enliven him.  After touching the coast, he turns east and at Portland, he heads into Washington.  In Washington, he briefly flirts with a woman who fires his imagination.  Then he meets some hang-gliding folk who discuss the thrill of the unknown and the risks involved.  As we read, and travel with him, we can see his writing change as well - he gets back into the trip again and seems more excited to see what else might come his way.

Here's my stretch with the symbolism.  His dip back into Oregon seems to be a return to the same state where he once languished in turmoil and low spirits.  Except that now, he isn't languishing anymore.  It's therefore a return to a former area of weakness but now with strength and a groundedness that lets him move through and not get stuck.  It is a repudiation of negativity that put him in the blues before.  And, as we'll see, he stays forward looking, moving without pause on to Wallula and to points beyond as he heads back into the state of Washington.

I do counseling because I've dealt my whole life with being stuck in places that aren't necessarily the best places for me to be.  These are self-critical, self-pitying and ultimately soul-sucking places that want me to stay there.  I've learned that when I leave those places they don't just disappear, just like Oregon was not going to fall off the map once LHM left it.  Instead, my hard places sit there and wait for me, seemingly knowing that I'll come back by roundabout routes.  If I'm not paying attention, often I end up back in them.  Then I get stuck again.  But lately, I've been doing something different.  I've been visiting those places but in a different frame of mind and with a different reference point.  Sometimes, it's hard.  But other times, with a new vision and outlook, I can remake those places into something much nicer.  It becomes me deciding when, how and even if I will visit, not fate or life dictating to me where I go.

Another very important and real symbol - by "real" I mean not my imagination - in the passage above is LHM's mention of sage.  Sage has symbolized a number of positive concepts throughout history.  On this page, I learned that sage stands for or was thought to contribute to the following:

immortality
increased mental capacity
healing
life creation
prosperity
business
curative powers
spiritual cleansing
banishing of evil spirits

In addition, sage is at the heart of a Christian legend that relates how Mary and Jesus escaped from the soldiers of Herod after Jesus' birth.  They asked a rose bush to open its petals and shelter them, but the rose bush refused and told them to go to the clove plant.  The clove also refused and referred them to the sage.  The sage blossomed abundantly and sheltered them, and the soldiers passed them by.  Since that time, the rose has been cursed with thorns, the clove with flowers that don't smell very good, and the sage has been blessed by curative powers.

Since LHM drives into an area abundant with sage, it doesn't seem to be a stretch that he is driving through a cleansing place, a healing place, and a place where the bad and even evil of the past can be banished.  And maybe this is all a coincidence and means nothing.  Sure, LHM could have decided to take the interstate and avoid going back into Oregon again.  But he didn't, so you can draw your own conclusions.

So, that's my little foray into symbolic territory.  Perhaps I've overthought this, but that's the beauty of symbolism.  It doesn't have to be something that one plans out.  LHM probably never even thought of this - he was just looking for a blue highway rather than the interstate.  It was up to me to make whatever symbolic allusions that I perceived.  But, I can take these flights of fancy because I am an unique reader and I can interpret as much as I want and I can allow my thoughts to go whither they wish.  That's the beauty of reading, Littourati!

Musical Interlude

Once again, I had a song come to mind for this post.  I'm not sure why it this song wanted to come forward, but it did.  The title is appropriate to the post, and so enjoy Get Back by The Beatles in their famous last rooftop concert at their Apple Studio in London.

If you want to know more about Umatilla

Center for Columbia River History: Umatilla
City of Umatilla
Wikipedia: McNary Dam
Wikipedia: Umatilla

Next up: Wallula, Washington