The Journey

The bus station in Lawton, Oklahoma, far too early, dawn painting the eastern sky and the streets empty, only the birds awake at this hour and asserting their territorial concerns. For the first time I notice how the grackle struggles slowly from post to branch as though almost too heavy to fly. And, when one lands near me and begins his call, I am amazed that I have not heard this sound before. In keeping with his rascally nature, the grackle does not sing but produces a series of throaty, wheezing, machinelike sounds, gradually increasing in volume, then ends with a raucous whistling. It is somehow fitting that this bird that has been the symbol of Lawton to me should be there to gaze stonily upon my departure.

And so to the bus and the familiar, dry plains of the west. In Oklahoma City we burrow deep into the tall buildings in the center and arrive at a bus station that hums with activity. Here we learn the passengers' paranoia as our luggage is disgorged from the bus and disappears in various directions. In Tulsa we will find that this was the moment a much-loved skateboard escaped and began a tour of America that, for all I know, continues still.

It was Tulsa, too, where the first major hitch occurred, leaving us standing on the tarmac as our designated bus left for St Louis an hour late. Much later an alternative was provided and we raced through the gathering twilight to make up the lost time. And we did, arriving minutes before the first bus and with plenty of time to make our next connection.

This one I stayed with all the way to New York City, through the night and the next day and on into the night again. Indianapolis passed hardly noticed in the darkness and the morning brought us to the hills of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Towns began to run into each other in my memory, only the haphazard houses climbing the hillsides standing out, as I wondered at the persistence of humanity in clinging to these in spite of all the empty flatness through which I'd passed.

Pittsburgh clambered up and down the bluffs fronting the Ohio River, the thick, brown waters sweeping under the bridges. Then it was on through the foothills to level farmland again and, eventually, Allentown, though we saw little of it but a McDonald's car park. As night fell, we crossed into New Jersey and prepared ourselves for New York City.

It is a fairyland at night, of course, a forest of lights mounting higher and higher into the night sky and stretching left and right as far as the eye can see. We were allowed this brief glimpse before plunging in and being disgorged at last into the underground bus station. Here the squalor of any big city meets us, everything worn and dirtied with the constant flow of humanity and the homeless wandering the halls in search of another day's survival. A long wait here, another bus and a ride through the streets of New York, and the sleep of exhaustion as we left the city.

In the darkest hour of the night, we made one last rest stop at a diner in the middle of nowhere. The smokers gathered in front of the bus to light up and suddenly we realized just how cold it had become. In minutes we were shivering, racing through our cigarettes to get back to the warmth of the bus. Even those returning home to Maine seemed shocked by the frozen air and we remembered tales of how cold it can be in New England. We were a subdued little crowd as we began the last leg of our journey.

Yet Boston was no colder than New York; I reasoned that we had been inland at that icy stop, without the moderating influence of the sea. One last long trudge through the empty and echoing cathedral that is Boston station and I had arrived, the long miles behind me and a confusion of sights and impressions remaining in my tired mind. The journey fades into the commonplace as life begins again.

Technorati tag: Journeys.