Geography Lesson

Walla Walla, WA -- Last night the nice folks I'm staying with here outside Walla Walla offered me clam chowder and I realized that I probably don't need to be as suspcious of seafood as I have been since I'm in a state with a coastline again. I've still been asking people for directions and tips on how to move forward, but I'm getting close enough there are really only a couple roads that run from where I am towards Portland.

I've been thinking, though, about all the directions I've gotten since I started and all that I've been told about the roads ahead of me by people who've been on them. I met a man in Bartonville, IL who had been all around the country on his motorcycle and who now worked, in his retirement, moving new cars between dealerships in the midwest. He had been in all of the contiguous states, riding twelve hour, sixteen hour, thousand mile days. He once rode from Denver to Reno, he told me, on the loneliest higway in America. He went to whole way on only two bottles of Gatorade.

When I told him I was from outside Boston. "Oh," he said, "Route 95." I said I'd be headed due west across Iowa and he told me it was three hundred and two miles on Interstate 80. Heading due west, he figured, I must be going through Denver, right? Before he could give me the mileage for that, I told him that no, I wouldn't be going through Denver. Denver is actually a bit south of Bartonville, but if you get on 80 West and don't stop, it'll take you there.

When I ask people for directions, they describe distances in terms of time in a car, they never think I can cover as much ground in a day as I can, and they usually don't know the backroads as well as they know bigger ones. People are much less likely to tell me the direct, diagonal county road to where I'm going than they are to tell me to go ten miles straight north on a highway with a 60-plus speed limit and then ten miles straight west on another. I do it too. When people ask about where I'm from I describe a town about half an hour outside of Boston

It makes sense, I suppose, that a person's mental geography reflects the things they do, the places they go, and how they go there, but I'd never given it much thought before this trip. People often don't notice whether they're going uphill or downhill because they're driving, and I've been tipped off to "short cuts" that end up being really steep climbs. I also get directions that reference local landmarks -- the local Wal-Mart or grocery store is a common one. I can also tell where people don't go from what they say to me. In Piqua, OH, a man in a diner told me that I was over four hundred miles from Indianapolis, but the actual distance was more like a hundred and twenty.

My mental map of the country, of course, has changed considerably since I started. Being able to conjure up images of places in South Dakota, Iowa and Idaho when I see them on a paper representation of the continent makes a world of difference, ad even having heard about places changes the way I think about them. In Orofino, a man told me he once drove on the lonliest highway in America and I said, "Oh, Reno to Denver."

Well, it's onwards for me. It'll be less than I week until I get to Portland, and I might not post again until then. Last night someone asked me if I was sad about my trip being almost over, and I almost surprised myself with my answer. I said that I hadn't thought about it, but that I was just about ready to be done. I've seen what a lot of people's lives are like in a lot of different places, but I'm about ready to see what my life is going to be like.