Familiar Trails

The journey west feels familiar and new all at once--plowing down the Midwestern highways between walls of corn, peering into a vat of grease beneath a pink Nebraska sunrise, the truck stop denizens, their friendly questions, curious stares, and giant mugs of coffee. We have experienced this all before--traversing the arteries of America, but the new crew members refresh our wonder.

We emerge from the corn in Wyoming, black cattle jog past oil derricks atop the grassy hills, and we roll over the deep rolling swells of earth that mark the great plains.

In Rawlins, Wyoming we circle the wagons, or rather the buses, for dinner. Marisol took whatever was in our cupboard and put together a wonderful meal. We share pad thai on the rooftop and look out over the little motorist's oasis amid the dry mountains.

We climb up and over the Rockies, coast past Salt Lake City, across the great salt flats and into the Nevada desert.

I understand the ‘proud to be American’ sentiment of many of the truckers and bikers and others who roads and trails of this vast and beautiful swath of earth. Despite all the billboards and chain restaurants, the petroleum addiction and the government that spends more in a week on the military than it does in a year on public education, there is a land and culture that I love too.

We are atop the Sierras now and will reach San Francisco sometime before sunrise, spend a day gathering grease, food, water, and other supplies and then head back into the desert for Burning Man.