Roosta

How do I summarize a trip of a lifetime in a few minutes? Since I’ve been back, many people I’ve met have wanted to know exactly that. It can’t be done; the range of experience and sights was just too varied. In the end, I wrote up a bunch of lists. The second half is below, with post references where appropriate. See the previous blog for the first half. Most Unexpected Surprises: 1. The incredible diversity of the United States. This country has an unbelievable variety of cultures, people, cities, landscapes, and histories; all of which manage to coexist, however uneasily. 2. How friendly people are in most of the country. Parts of the US have a reputation of being intolerant of people obviously from elsewhere. I found the exact opposite, friendly people willing to engage ... read more

After nine months away, being back feels really strange. Home has an odd duality, so familiar I can navigate with my eyes closed yet also very different to how I remember it. T.S. Eliot once stated that someone really can’t know their home until they go away, and it’s certainly true for me. I finally decided how to handle these feelings, with one last day of exploration. Like most Massachusetts kids, we learned about the start of the Revolution: Paul Revere’s ride, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and so forth. In grade school, we visited most of those sites. I haven’t been back since. One of the ironies of travel is many people seek... read more

Today, the rain was still falling, for the third day straight. That mattered less than it would have earlier, because I only want to see the pavement on the way home. I’ve seen the hills of Tennessee before, when they were covered in beautiful green trees. Now they are bare, and brown. Today was a long soggy grind of a drive. On this Interstate, I had to deal with the big negative of driving away from Memphis. I had to deal with it before, or course, but then I was on a voyage of discovery (see April 28th). Now, it’s just one more thing to deal with. Memphis has the remarkable property of being within a two day drive of all but five major cities in the United States (the exceptions? Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Anchorage, and ... read more

I walked out of my hotel this morning, and got a surprise. I figured that by this point that all I would see was bare trees, and McKittrick Canyon would be my last foliage (see Nov 4th). The brown forests along route 66 yesterday did nothing to dispel those thoughts. Unexpectedly, Tulsa not only had foliage, it was still in color. Wonderful red and yellow trees appeared all over the city. Too bad the sky was grey and overcast, premonition of a huge cold front moving in. Thanks to both its small size and oil wealth, Tulsa feels like a boutique city in many ways, kin to the wealthy suburbs found outside large urban areas. Like wealthy men everywhere, those oil millionaires wanted cultural cache (see April 10th), so Tulsa has an impressive set of museums ... read more

Oklahoma views itself as the epitome of the American pioneer spirit. The state started out as Indian Territory, where tribes forcibly removed from other parts of the US were dumped. These included the Cherokee, at the end of the Trail of Tears (see May 19th). Eventually, white settlers looked on the land as valuable, and pushed the federal government to open it. On April 22, 1889, they did. Any settler could claim 160 acres for free as long as they farmed it. This resulted in the great Oklahoma Land Rush, and major towns like Oklahoma City sprung up overnight. Naturally, some settlers cheated and snuck in earl... read more