A Northwest Passage

Greetings from Seattle, everybody!
That naked baby on Nirvana's debut album "Nevermind" is 21 damn years old now! Eddie Vedder's middle aged and has already drifted in esteemable older rock icon deaconism: the making of film soundtracks. My, the time flies...remember the stripped down EP by Alice n Chains: Jar of Flies? I do. The gunge scene was of course over when it started, it seemed, and drug overdoses and suicides and the documenteries about the overdoses and suicides have all occured. The candles in effigy have melted long ago...but the city still smells like coffee, and there is just the smallest smell of teen spirit in the air...and always will be.

I like Seattle a lot, and I've already bumped my facebook friends up by 3! People are really friendly here. They like living here, it seems. However, the weather has turned over the last three days, and my three new best friends have all told me they are bracing for the long gray hopefully 6 but more than likely closer to 8 months ahead.

Mother Nature rules all, still, no matter what we've done. That grand and mighty interstate, that concrete river route I easily rolled into town on (the traffic by natives in little canoes made by Ford, Chevy, but more so by Toyota and Honda, were the only hindrances, and we thank God we were not shot by their arrows and spears) gets closed down in Snoqualmie Pass, a beautiful mountain route outside of Seattle, at least 6-9 days a year. That's total shut down on an interstate, folks, and it has been closed for as much as 21 days in a single winter. That's a long time in a long winter to cut access down a long road in America. I'm surprized there's not more cannibilism due to lack of supplies in the winter by the the colonists, but I guess the natives have teached them how to fish by now. Mother nature still rules, I say again, and people of the northwest know, and revere her, they just hope she's not too moody.

The trip from Grand Forks, N.D. to Seattle was filled with dynamic landscapes and dynamic people. Its a long way, around 1,500 miles, and I saw arid zones, forests, big rivers and big rigs along the highway. Sunsets that a mortal is foolish to explain and colors I've never seen before on the great plains of the nation. I also saw Texans. Yep, a fracking oil boom is alive and well in North Dakota, and towns like Minot and Dickenson, N.D. aren't building hotels enough to house their boots and spurs. A native North Dakotan was telling me its the wierdest thing, "I grew up here all my life, and now all the sudden everbody's got a Texas accent." The oil rigs still can't take away from the grand skyline one can see up here...at least, not yet.

Huckleberries grow wild in Montana and Idaho, and I went into a cafe in St. Regis, MT, where I was when I got the news that my father died last year, and if there's anything you like, they have a Huckleberry based recipe of it. "Huckleberry" in front of anything just makes it sound better, lighter, happier, and St Regis looks a lot better to me now than it did last December.

Well, there's coffee to drink and when in Rome...

Take care,
Todd

Up River and Out West...

Hello everybody
Greetings from the sacred land of the Sioux. Of course, the Sioux did not believe land could be o wned but we showed them, for a little while, anyway, the Great Spirit has seen it all and will correct these little mistakes we foolish humans are prone to make. In the meantime, it looks like every last Sioux indian has joined me in this bus station in Sioux Falls, SD. I'm guessing the Sioux don't fly much. I'm guessing not too many people who made the trip up with me, from Memphis do, all the way up through cotton country where the Memphis blues morph into the St. Louis Jazz and over and around Lewis and Clark's little trip on the Missouri, do. Hmm, is it because theyed be damned if the Man makes them take their shoes off? Hmm, I don't think so. I think it has more to do with the money in their pockets, or lack their of. Its hard to think, with all the people you see in airports and all those damned annoyances due to airlines making cuts and the fact that you still can't make phone calls or to be told when to use our smart phone, etc..., that flying is a luxury that MANY people can't afford to take...not just Indians! I see so many people along the way that are desperately trying to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, to the point of tears, and they're not even halfway there. The only solace is seeing a really beautiful country go by. There reallry are amber waves of grain, and I think I heard banshees shrieking in the Ozarks. Its funny, just when you think the scenery goes on forever, it changes before you know it. Its beautiful. The people traveling with you change before you know it. They're beautiful, too.

Old times there are not forgotton....

Howdy,
Well, I traversed the entire deep south in the last 6 days, from Savannah all the way over and up to Memphis, just short of the Canaan's land of the north. I saw a sunset across a cotton field today that eliminated all questions in the universe for just the smallest moment and everything was one...then that moment passed and the wharehouses, truck stops and strip malls came back into view. Let me tell you the salt of the earth travels well on the back of the greyhound. And, everywhere down the interstates across the marshes, pine forests, cotton fields, strip malls, truck stops, dollar generals, family dollars, super dollar stores, old brick five and dime stores long gone out of business which now house taquerias in the middle of once thriving small towns, and one Hardee's after another I hear one word over and over: jobs. People going everywhere, up, down, left and right all over the bus routes looking for jobs. Some have the hope in their voice of going somewhere for a job, others with the hollow hopeless voice of not finding one where they thought they would and going the only place they know to go to: home. Home is a state of mind in the south, a place of, at once, despair and sanctuary. Home is where the world makes the most sense to us, with or without hope. Ok, enough preaching, besides I'm leaving the south tomorrow, to St. Louis, and the gold beyond. I plan to visit a tent city there, aptly named: Hopeville. Take care and see you round the bend...

City of Ghosts

Well, I found out where I want to live. It is Savannah. I planned to visit it for a day and jump back on the bus, but ended up staying the night. It is such a beautiful city...and an OLD city. The Antebellum architecture - with statues of Michelangelo, Ruben, and others...and cemeteries filled with war heroes and scoundrels - looms quietly over the city reminding the people of unknown energies working in the world. People beleive in ghosts here, at least my hotel clerk did. She was also very kind, as was the waitress at the restaurant on River Street where I ate breakfast, the lady at the cafe where I camped out and charged my phone, and the waitress at the one of the best Italian places I've ever eaten at, in the city market. All three were born and raised here and all didn't really care to live anywhere else. An idyllic place, almost...for all around the fun and evergetic happenings you see the homeless or downtrodden coming in and out off the edge of the outer dark. But everybody and everything is part of one thing, one big thing, and moss drips everywhere for that one thing is very still. And deep. I'm not sure what that one thing is, but you can feel it...maybe ghosts are real, and maybe they tap you on the shoulder on your dark walk to the hotel. Some places just have more access to the rest universe than others. Savannah is in its own little area out in space.

Good Morning America Where Are You?

Greetings from deep down in Appalachia!
Well, I've decided once again to travel the country by bus. I'm about a week in, rolling through Chattanooga, Tennessee as I type. So far its been New York to Burlington,VT to Montreal, Canada to Boston, MA to Louisville, KY and I'm on my way to Savannah, GA now and its beginning to feel like a Johnny Cash song...finally. I'm out to see what America looks like from the inside and so far the inside of it is filled with some wonderful people. Some have been less tjan wonderful, but hell, its a bus and sometimes the toilet smells like a county fair porta potty, so who can blame 'em? So far, I've sat by Amish, Pakistani, Indian, Mexican, Alabamans, New Englanders, mid-westerners, bible readers and meth addicts. Its both calm and crazy and its All American. I hope you wanna follow along, it is your country after all and, who knows, I just may run into you along the way. And, if you want me to stop by and say hello to anybody you know out there, lemme know. If I can, I will. 10-4, good buddy, be well and take care.

Todd