crossposted from
unbossed
I am part way through a few weeks of car travels that are taking me mostly through Red States. I am 1200 miles, as the freeways flow, from my starting point in the deepest of deep blue cities in a state that is mostly purple with a few red spots. So far, I have close to an extra 2000 miles on the car thanks to taking back roads and indirect routes to get where I am. For the next few days, I am in Colorado. Before that, it was Nebraska, and that's the state I want to talk about here.
When I was planning this trip, I wanted to go via the Nebraska sand hills area - that's the northwest quadrant of the state. But I found it was hard to get information about it on-line, in bookstores.
I tried a query on Lonely Planet's thorntree site, but the reaction was: Why would anyone want to go there? There is nothing to see. Oh, but this is just one more reason to go there - what is being ignored, left unseen?
The basic impulses were several. Being a shunpiker flows in my blood - the freeways get you there fast, but the price you pay is seeing nothing that matters. In addition, I am a geology groupie. Give me a new terrain, and I want to see it (especially if it involves volcanos, something that was in Nebraska's past, but less visible now.) I come from an Ohio Republican farmer background, and seeing rural areas takes me back to the scenes of my childhood.
I wanted to see stars. Jupiter, Mars, and Venus are putting on a great show now, but they are almost invisible in the light polluted areas of our country. Astronomy buffs hold star parties in the Nebraska sand hills, because, with a population density of less than a person a square mile, there is no light pollution.
Finally, I wanted to see what the people in the Red States see, because, what you see is what you are.
I want to reflect on each of these goals in separate posts.
When you travel, there is always the possibility of discovery and the unexpected. One of the things that I hadn't planned for was what would be filling the radio shows I would listen to - Katrina. As I crossed the Red States I passed the time listening to the radio reports on Katrina, and they made me think about community and country. Who are we? Are we one country? One People? Or are we insulated individuals who just happen to live within the same boundaries?
Katrina presents this juxtaposition - individual v. community responsibility. So did the last election. So here are some thoughts on community and identity.
As I drove through the small Nebraska towns along highway 34, 2, 83, 12, 20, 2/71, 29, 26, 71, and 88, I tried to understand what life was like for those who were not just passing through.
Most of the towns had populations well under 1000. Most looked dilapidated, unloved, unlovely. I see few churches, but I hear lots of religion on the radio.
Who would choose to live here? Why are they forced to live here? How do they live? What are their lives like with no movies, no culture as we in the Blue States think of it? But this is pretty much the way I grew up in a small, rural Ohio town. That's how I came to love nature, because it was what I had. So I know there are alternatives that are at least as valid as being able to see Shakespeare performed by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
So let me get specific and talk about [Halsey Nebraska - population 59 - deep in the sand hills. Halsey is one of these sad looking towns when viewed from Route 2. Many of the buildings along it are empty and decaying. Empty houses are for sale, and it is hard to imagine who will buy them. The sand hills rise and fall, golden with dry grass this time of year, green in the valleys where there are huge pools of water, lined with trees. The sunlight changes the way they look, and I wish I had paints and could capture the sensuality of that light on these hills.
Trains with 100 cars carrying coal travel east on the railroad track next to the road, one after another. Herds of cattle graze on the hillsides. Here and there are fields of corn and sorghum. They are bound for the Blue States as much as the Red States. They are feeding us, keeping us warm, making our electricity. Farther west are huge windmills, big enough that just one can power each of these small towns and more.
Two blocks from the Stockade Motel, where I am staying, just over the railroad tracks, and absolutely invisible from Route 2 is the Middle Loup River, a wide river with a strong current where it is deep, but mostly it is shallow with sand bars. Birds light on the sand bars and swoop through the air. It is green and stunningly beautiful. My dogs dash into and through the water and chase each other and the birds over the sand bars. Who wouldn't want to live on the banks of this beautiful place?
While waiting for dinner in the TT saloon, I sit near a table of ten and hear them talking about the upcoming wedding of two of them, about reminiscences. One is Asian. They seem to work together and to have known one another for ages.
An old farming couple sits at another table and talks quietly. Lee and Rita own the TT and know everyone there, except me. Lee waits and clears tables while his wife Rita cooks. The menu includes standard bar fare, plus gizzards and Rocky Mountain Oysters. How often are they ordered? I meant to ask but forget till I am on the road the next day.
The TV is on to The Game. People here are rooting for the Huskers. In the commercial break, there is an ad set in a beautiful green backyard where a child's birthday party is in progress. The celebrants are hitting a pinata. One man looks up and sees a brand new car parked in a driveway, and his face is filled with lust. The pinata bursts open and it is filled with keys for this model of car. The partygoers scramble for the keys. Watching this ad and shows and ads like it must be, for these people, as unreal as if we were watching it from Iraq or the Sudan. Except that English is our first language.
In the motel, we chat with a woman who is working at there. She has moved to Halsey from Colorado, because her husband found work here thinning forests. Only the work ended five months ago, and he can't find a new job. He says he is looking for work and wants to leave.
She says he will tell her it is time to get up and go with almost no notice or discussion, and she will go. This has been their marriage, constant travel to find work.
Wherever we go, people wave to us. After dinner, we walk up the steep road toward Purdum, and watch the sun setting behind these steep dunes. Unbelievably beautiful. We come back after dark and, as our eyes adjust, we see a sky so filled with stars it is hard to pick out Cassiopeia's W shape. The Milky Way, so full of stars it appears white, snakes through the sky. We see two satellites whiz overhead. Every night all this has been over our forebears' heads and it still is, but I haven't seen any of these sights for years. Most of us have never seen them. We are growing up forgetting the stars, but those in this Red State have them just out their backyards.
So what is it like living in a place that is so empty? If what we see is what we are, if what we do is what we become, how does this terrain - one-fourth of the state - form the people of Nebraska? I can only speculate. Here, there is a mix of community and self-reliance. It is easy to see the connections with one's neighbors and to extend neighborliness to those in sight, but it is hard to imagine and grasp the lives of those farther away, those who live in large cities, who are different and who live different lives. What is seen on TV and in the movies presents a caricature of the lives of those elsewhere, and makes it difficult to see them as kin, part of our large community.
In the farming areas it is possible to travel miles between farmsteads. You have to be tremendously self-reliant to live with the loneliness, especially in the winters. Maybe it makes it impossible to understand those aren't as self-reliant, or to understand different forms of self-reliance.
And yet, we are and can be one country. We need these people and what they do for us. And I hope they feel that they need the Blue States as well, that we have things to offer them, things they want and need beyond luxury cars, that we are in this together, one community, one people.