Tag Archives: travel writing

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Further observations of Oklahoma:
The landscape, geography, topography smoothing out, like two ends of a coil pulled farther and farther apart. Slowly. Mile after mile. The hills longer. Gentler. Not so sharp and jagged, but worn like an old, old saw blade.

Hay baled in bales, each rolled up like a single piece of taffy and placed musically throughout their fields, like the pits in the plates of an antique music box, ticking little teeth to play a silent score. The score of the tractor and the farmer, the flycatcher and kingbird, of the changing seasons, and, once, of the sweat and toil that is still practiced in small pockets, remote areas of the world where the people still rely on milk from their cows to survive the winter, and the hay that they grow sustains them in their mountain villages. It is a music that often isn’t heard, and one need no musical instruments to play it, nor a knowledge of theory or scales to understand it. It is the rhythm of a life lived simply, and it is felt in the blood and in the skin.

The ancient windmill erect and lonely in a field of wheat, it’s blades twisted and broken, no longer spinning freely, exuberantly in the rushing wind, but dangling from its axis like the shadow of a Calder mobile—sad, and delicate, and beautiful—or like Nanantatee’s “poor broken crutch of an arm” in H. Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

The butterflies, just the size of a quarter, in chalky shades of yellow, blue and brown,
that dance across the highway, some singly, others in pairs—a duet in four dimensions, turning round and round and round each other, swooping up and down in elegant dress, like some Japanese in his-and-hers best kimonos celebrating the new day like it is a new year.

The little beetles with their glinting, hard carapaces that shine like plate armor, skittering across the road, legs moving like a pianists’s fingers playing a prestissimo.

The traffic on the interstate, which parallels route 66, and seems to sail by in the distance like ships on an horizon.

Clouds at the end of the day which look as if they were applied to the sky with a palette knife—a steely, grey-blue smeared onto an aged, slightly yellowed canvas.

Fields of wheat, golden-blonde and pea-green shimmering under the afternoon sun, every stalk leaning in unison with the wind, beautiful like a head of hair, like the Greek gods, like cracked and ancient pottery, like archaeological sites going on and on seemingly forever like the Euphrates and Tigris rivers through Mesopotamia when giants still strode the land.

A sign advertising astronaut Thomas P. Stafford as from Weatherford, OK,
And another sign advertising Garth Brooks as from Yukon.

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Wednesday, 05/11

Iron Tree Coffee in El Reno, OK. Not sure I feel like writing. Not sure why I should bother. Nearly 3:30. I feel pressed for time. So often I feel pressed for time.

Small town. Slow town. Quiet town. The coffee here could be better (can’t it always? (most times)), but it’s better than many places, and well appreciated regardless of any complaints I might make. Two high school kids and a middle-schooler come in and don’t order anything. And that’s okay. That’s the type of place it is. That’s the type of town this is. There’s an acoustic singer/songwriter playing over the speakers, and the song is stirring me in melancholy. No one else in this vastness, this cavernous space with its beautiful, coppery, tin ceiling some twelve feet overhead, and bare brickwalls, but for myself, the bored barista, and these three kids. It all lends to the atmosphere of loneliness, and this sad bastard with his guitar and his dismal lyrics echoing through the room…

I ate lunch at a marvelous, little diner called Sid’s: est. 1990. Just a tiny, red building on the corner of Rt. 66 and Choctaw. Charming older lady, probably in her 70’s took my order and showed me pictures on her phone of a festival that occurred in town the past weekend when they cooked an 800 pound hamburger….

The place is famous for its grilled onion burger, so I had to order it. And a 1/4 order of fries, which was plenty large enough. And a tasty milkshake. Everything was delicious, and seated at the low, bar in such friendly, comfortable, snug surroundings I was put into quite the mood of joviality. Maps on the wall behind, stuck in a hundred places, at least, with pushpins of the many visitors’ origins. Freedom Fries, and Freedom Toast on the menu were a humorous, though sad, because I doubt not ironic, touch. It seemed a happy place. Now I’m in this cafe listening to this morose, sad-bastard music, the ennui thick in the air, filling the space. The internet was nice to use. I think I’m going to go now. I have forty more miles to do.

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Friday, 05/06

Oklahoma observations
thus far: flat
level, even; hills (east of Tulsa):
rolling, undulating,
up, then down, then up, then down,
rolling long and rolling slow like a rolling ocean swell
from one horizon—
that may simultaneously look so small
(just a piece of thread caught and held in the wind)
yet so immense it is,
and ever, and ever, and ever out of reach,
—to another,
ripples on a pond from a thrown stone

Trees speckle the plains that in places are swollen and bulging,
writ in harmony with the landscape they tie together
like various notes on a musical score—a soundless melody;
Scissor-tailed flycatchers and eastern kingbirds perched on wires and fences,
alert and fluttering off at my approach along the road;
Cows sprinkle the landscape all across
like poppy seeds on a bagel, or fleas on a dog’s pelt;
And the roads—long and black like cauterized wounds threading their way through

Wasn’t intending this to be a “poem,” but I like it more than just a list, and it provided me with some entertainment—the editing.

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Wednesday, 05/03

Woke up to sunlight streaming in through curtains that wouldn’t close. Fell back asleep for a couple hours. Woke up later to hammering and a throwing around of what sounded like weights on the roof. I’m only here because I couldn’t find the home of the woman who invited me to camp on her property. By the time I had cycled an additional eight or nine miles in search of this mysterious land it was dark and nearly nine o’clock. The motel sign shown like a beacon of dollar bills raised high aflame, and drew my exhausted, lazy self to it like a moth. I was photographing for a few short seconds in my room though when the camera battery died, so I guess this was a good thing—I suppose I say that as a way of justification, though I don’t need to.

These places all serve the same continental breakfast: cereals, waffle maker, bad coffee, bad juice, bad biscuits, bad gravy, bad pastries, bad bread, bad…. Here, there are two pieces of sausage left that look just like two little dog turds, like someone’s little chihuahua took a squat right over the pan while no one was looking. The juices in the pitchers taste nothing like their respective labels. Two women are rearranging the breakfast bar. I feel like telling them to stop wasting their time, that rearranging the display won’t make the food or drink palatable, or look more appealing.

While I’m sitting here a huge, dark-skinned girl walks in to fill out an application. She’s wearing black and white basketball shorts, black hi-tops, and a black button-down shirt that doesn’t fit her. I feel pity and sadness for her. Not necessarily because she’s applying to work here, but because she appears so tired and down-trodden, because she likely knows nothing of the wider world, and is likely not well-educated, like she’s living in a world where every move she makes is one made out of desperation because she sees no future for herself, and, worst of all, sees no present and has no idea how to fix this except to get a job, to create an income, to create some semblance of stability in her life, but she’s not even sure if this is right, and this is what most everyone is doing, and yet no one seems to see that stability is an illusion, that we all stride upon shifting, slippery, rocky ground, some perhaps more so than others, but what really matters is that one knows that, and moves forward anyway, for there is no rock face that isn’t crumbling, no plains that aren’t susceptible to drought, no forest fire-retardant, and no lake immune to pollution.

After sitting at a table in a corner, filling out an application, the girl turns it in to the ladies—who are still playing with the breakfast display—and slowly shuffles from the hotel like a despondent elephant too tired to lift its feet, and tied with a heavy, thick rope to a colossal sandstone block which she pulls behind her at the bidding of some cruel, unidentifiable master who stands atop it whip in hand.

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Yesterday cycled over the Boston Mountains, the most western mountain range within the Ozark Plateau. I thought it to be pretty easy, but my expectations of difficulty were quite high after reading other persons’ online acccounts of having cycled them.

Traffic was light, as most drivers opt to take a faster route along the interstate which more or less parallels Route 71, north-south, linking the Fort Smith area to Fayetteville.

It was gorgeous.

Everywhere but for the road winding up the mountains in front of me was fluffy, white clouds obscuring a blue sky, sunlight intermittently throbbing through the occasional break in the clouds, like catching a glimpse of a beating heart through gaps in a shroud of pericardial tissue; the greenery of trees rising up on either side of me or, sometimes, only on one side of me as in places the lower slope of the mountains fell precipitously and only the tops of those trees there were capable of reaching up to me; and broad rock faces in a multitude of grey and brown hues, some cascaded over with water, some merely trickling with water, some moss and lichen covered, some dry and bare, appearing so hard, so solid that one couldn’t ever imagine them being worn away, even over the course of millennia of millennia. No noise but for my tires on the asphalt, the birds in the trees, water playing over rocks, rushing through culvert and gully, and the occasional truck or car, or gang of motorcycles.

At the highest point of the climb is a small, antiquated gift shop and museum. Nothing of interest there beyond the view overlooking Fort Smith Lake, and other ridges of the mountain range carpeted thickly in oak, hickory, pine and cedar. The “museum” itself is a bit peculiar, but worth the five or ten minutes it takes to look around. It is a small room to the right of the entrance of the building, all the walls lined with tall glass cases, the glass cases filled with everything from stone arrowheads, to antique dolls, antique condiment containers, kerosene lamps, pistols, leatherwork, farm implements, a four foot long rattlesnake preserved in a narrow, glass tube, an even longer rattlesnake skin, killed on the property, mounted on a board, the head of an old show horse that had performed on the property for twenty years before it died of what (and when), I don’t know….

In the store one could purchase tumbled stones, raw stones, geodes to crack open, hummingbird feeders, cedar blocks for smoking food, etc., jams, jellies and sauces, dolls, walking sticks. It was a quiet place, though I imagine it saw a lot more business before the interstate was built a few years back. Now that has become the main north-south artery for the region and few people travel this road. It’s great for cyclists, but not at all good for the few businesses that relied on that regular traffic. There are a good many derelict motels, inns and other buildings that I passed along the ridge. Now, I suppose it is considered the slower, scenic route, but most of the time that’s not what most people want. They want to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible, granted, I’m betting the views from the interstate aren’t too bad.

I wonder what will become of Artist’s Point in another five or ten years.

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Friday, 4/29, 7:45 a.m.

Seated at a table at the Java House cafe in Greenwood chatting with the lady behind the counter.

Yawning.
So tired.
Thunderstorms.
Dripping.

Woke up at 4:15, looked at the weather and decided I would leave early, in the dark, in order to get as much distance in before the rain began as possible.

I ate a banana and a scoop of peanut butter, packed quickly, and was on the road about 5:00. The dry period lasted perhaps 30 minutes after setting out.

I am exhausted. Utterly knackered. Only 120 miles over the last two days, but only about nine or ten hours of sleep between them, too.

I arrived here soaked through. Shivering. I knew I needed to get out of the rain and dry out as quickly as possible once that began so I’m very grateful this place is here. I’m also very grateful for Shipley’s Do-nuts, also in town. Some of the tastiest and best textured donuts I’ve ever had—a near perfect springy chewiness, and density. Anyway, I’m now at Java House, as I wrote, hoping for things to dry some after changing out of what I was wearing (bib shorts not withstanding). I’m planning on getting a hotel, partly because everything is wet and, partly because this storm isn’t supposed to let up until late tonight. Andddd it would be nice to get an extra-nice night’s sleep.

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After about 50km I stop at a gas station to refill my water bottles, wash my face, and take a pee. As soon as I walk into this place that is so much more than just a gas station I am assaulted by the odor of deep-fried everything. There is also a grey haze hovering languidly, like the droopy-eyed gaze of the man in a chair in the dining area, in what one would expect to be relatively clean, relatively fresh air. The whole… I don’t even know what to call this place—gas station-cum-deli-cum-burger/pizza/taco joint-cum-convenience/hardware store—is full of smoke. I think I’m the only one to notice this.

I’m continuing to look around and observe what all is going on here, what all is contained within these smoke-filled walls. I notice a rack of t-shirts in a corner, and with them stacks of sombreros. In another room, kind of off to the side is a pool table. An old black and white western flick is showing on a flat-screen television near the entrance. A middle-aged man with an enormous gut is slumped down in a chair at a cheap, wooden table watching it while he plays with his phone.

I wash my face, and find a room down the hall where the bathrooms are that has a tanning bed confined within. I take a few pictures, none of which are satisfactory. I walk back into the main room. The haze hasn’t lessened. I’m looking for some sort of real food. Something that’s not deep-fried, or from the numerous Tyson™ CAFOs I’ve passed on my way here, or in a can, bag, or plastic wrapper. In short I’m looking for a fruit or a vegetable, one that hasn’t been processed into anything, but there’s not even a single apple or banana in the dump. This, I think to myself, is the American Dream. This is the greatest achievement of the Westward Expansion, the Industrial Revolution, and all the technologies that have come since. This is what people slave their lives away for: to come into and shop at a dirty, smelly convenience store where one may purchase a hammer, a box of nails, a roll of duct tape, several cans of tuna, a loaf of Wonderbread™, some yellow mustard, a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of Cheez Whiz™, a hat to shade the sun from his eyes while he’s driving his Big Truck, a bottle of Coke™, several packets of ramen, a case of beer, two slices of pizza (or maybe some chicken tenders instead), sides of fried okra and baked beans, and a Snickers™ bar for dessert. And don’t forget the motor oil to wash it all down to keep things running smoothly.

To think that it’s taken me weeks traveling on a bicycle to finally arrive here, at this particular intersection, on this particular road in Arkansas, to at last discover this great pinnacle of human productivity. I’m so thunderstruck that I think perhaps I should just turn around and go home, or maybe I should just stop everything right here, right now, and roll out my sleeping bag on the floor because I would never have to leave, or be in want of anything ever again.

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I found what I thought was a fine camping spot just inside Perryville, across the Fourche La Fave River. A lovely park complete with pavilion, picnic tables, electric, bathrooms, water, playground; in short, everything one might want or need.

I got there early in the day, and was able to wash up, make some phone calls to family who I hadn’t spoken to in a while, and cooked up some dinner. I began setting up my tent probably around 8 o’clock with a few people still hanging around the park as night was falling over everything. Once the tent is up I go about organizing my gear within, slide into my sleeping bag, and open up Thoreau’s Walden before turning off the light. About 11 o’clock a cop shows up. He does the typical cop thing, which means he shines his flashlight into, or onto, my tent and orders me out of it. A rather rude thing to do, if you don’t mind my saying. Anyway, I crawl out of my sleeping bag and tent in my boxers of course, and he just looks at me for a second, probably not expecting a somewhat clean-shaven, young man to be stepping out in only his boxers, before telling me the park closes after dark and that I am trespassing on city property. I simply stare at him in bafflement, like some sort of deaf and dumb idiot, clearly unable to decipher the words that have come out of his mouth. And, in a sense, I couldn’t—this bizarre idea that I might be trespassing on city property because I happened to either a) not be from the city, or b) be there after hours is baffling to me. He then asks me if I understand that and I sort of stutter an incomprehensible reply to which he responds by looking me over with an appraising eye. He then tells me that I have to pack everything up and move on, but then immediately asks me what it is I’m doing camping at the city park anyway. I launch into my story about how I’m cycling around the U.S. and that I had come from Little Rock earlier in the day, and that the park just looked so inviting that I couldn’t resist choosing it as my spot to stay for the night. I mentioned that I have a tendency to like being in plain view of the public in these smaller towns in order to invite conversation; I’m not some sort of maniac, just a traveler needing a place to sleep for the night. He likes my story and is impressed with what I’m doing  but tells me I still need to pack my things up, but also that he can give me a lift to the next town if I’d like. He also wants to check my ID, presumably to make sure he’s not letting a murderer, arsonist, or some other felon of sorts off the hook potentially.

I begin packing up my gear, at a rather glacial pace I might add, while he’s over in his vehicle doing the whole song and dance, whatever that might be, with my driver’s license. He comes back and tells me my ID checked out OK (very relieving!), and, in fact, that I can stay the night as long as I’m gone not long after daybreak. Apparently he appreciated the fact that I was “straight” with him. He even said he would come back from time to time to check on me and make sure all’s quiet. I don’t actually know if he did this because I eventually fell asleep, though not so quickly as I would have liked thanks to having been roused from my tent and confronted in the manner that I was. Needless to say, I was exultant when he told me I could stay put for the night.

It is now about 7:30 am, the following morning and I’m sitting here at a picnic table writing this after having strolled the park, said hello to the few people out for a morning walk, and taken a number of pictures of morning sun and sky through the trees and flowering bushes. I did wake up early as I promised, packed up most of my gear and, most importantly, my tent, but really couldn’t resist the temptation to wander about the dewey field, and along its wooded edge with my camera. During this entire time the police officer never showed back up, so I figured what the hell, I’m going to make a cup of coffee, cook my breakfast, and relax. If someone else shows up and tries to give me a hard time it doesn’t look as though I camped out there, and I can just say that I rolled off the street to relax for a bit and make a cup of coffee.

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So far, a lovely day. Sun shining in a crisp, blue sky; the occasional cloud; mountains striding along beside me, left and right; the Arkansas River winding along beside me too. Little Rock is full of cycling and walking paths. Truly a city that wants its residents to be able to enjoy being out of doors. From the perspective of a traveling cyclist there could be little better a thing than that.

In one small area just outside of the city, where the paths peter out, I spy rows of garden plots with small cabins, similar to what one might see around Europe. I am amazed and impressed; it’s hardly a sight one expects to see in the States where so few people have any understanding, or desire to learn, how to garden and grown one’s own food.

Further along, deeper into the valley, beyond Pinnacle Mountain, life here becomes an idyll. Fields of yellow, inhabited by cattle and the occasional few horses snuffling about amongst the grass and flowers, stretch towards those emerald green mountains towering on either side of me. The only sounds are the hum of my tires on the asphalt, the warning cries of unfamiliar birds as I pass by, and the roar of the few automobiles on the road along this stretch. It is warm and, at one point, I espy a small herd of cows, twenty or thirty of them, crowded around the base of a tree, keeping cool in the shade of its canopy.

Truly a spectacular region.

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Camping, unbothered, hopefully, in Hazen, AR., another one of those small towns with little more than a single main street running straight through its heart, on one side of which is nothing, and on the other side of which is really nothing. Well, there are a series of brick buildings, inside one of which is an antique store, but everything else is vacant. I found a lovely spot for my tent—a grass plot with a few small trees situated between two old buildings, one of which being the aforementioned antique store. It is much less obvious than many a camping spot I’ve chosen, I must say.

I’m setup alongside one of the buildings, beneath a Mulberry tree which, fortunately or unfortunately, is laden with berries that are not yet ripe. I say fortunately because they won’t be dropping and making a mess all over the ground and my tent, but unfortunately because they’re not available yet to be eaten.

Earlier, upon arriving in town, after observing what there was around me, and taking a few pictures of whatever happened to catch my interest up and down the main thoroughfare, I found my way to a small grocery and picked up some fruit as well as extra veggies for my lentil & rice dinner. After leaving, and about to be on my way to find an appropriate spot to camp—where I am now writing this— I was approached by a young man who was curious about my rig—he, actually, unlike many, had some idea of what I was doing, as he himself was interested in doing something similar. This boy and I got to talking when his friend came out and joined our conversation. To make a short, uninteresting story even shorter, I may have two new blog readers, but, perhaps more importantly, they gave me something like two quarts of water when I mentioned that was next on my to-do list. Very grateful to them for their generosity and the pleasant conversation.

This morning I’ve decided to eat at the only diner in town. They like to call themselves a cafe but the coffee is the worst thing here. Mainly it tastes like it was brewed through a mildewed sock, and the packets of non-dairy creamer (one actually has to request half and half) and sugar don’t in any way improve it. It is only $.91, though. Ninety-one cents! Free refills to boot, though why anyone would want a second cup, let alone a third or fourth, is beyond my understanding. Even at that price, and with the refills it’s still overpriced. At least the food is somewhat palatable, though everything tastes a bit like it was cooked on a greasy, dirty griddle, and is obviously of low quality, probably trucked in from a warehouse somewhere.

At the table behind me sits an ancient man. He’s only just toddled in a moment ago. He is trying to say something to his waitress about an employee who offered to pay for his meal on a previous occasion, however, he doesn’t know her name, and he is having an awful problem attempting to spit out what it is he is trying to communicate to the girl. His way of talking is a combination mumble and stutter. He sounds as though he’s had a topical anesthetic applied to his tongue and lips, and so is incapable of moving them in any coordinated action, thus making it impossible to give voice to his request that would seem likely to go unheeded perhaps, anyway. His voice and way of speaking sound a bit like a tumble of rocks bounding down a slope of loose scree—each individual sound of rock hitting rock melded together to create one, single, indecipherable sound.

This is a diner full of locals, all come together at one place—this tiny, no-account town, like so many others of its kind, could only support one place like this. Many of them come and go singly, yet sit at various tables joining friends who are already seated. I like that. The men are all bearded or mustached, and relatively progressed in age—I would estimate most of them to be in their sixties, though some, perhaps, are even older than that. The youngest I see here would have to be in his fifties. All are grossly overweight and mainly farmers I would guess, as that’s the predominant industry around these parts. “These parts,” being the Arkansas Delta, which, thank God, I am nearly free of, as it’s a flat and featureless area most known for growing rice, cotton and soy.

I like the relaxed, comforting, friendly, homey feel of the place, but deplore the low quality of food. Of course this isn’t the only small town in the nation serving bad food from ingredients that may have been grown here, but were then shipped elsewhere to be processed into a food item, then shipped back in a state that is supposedly fit for eating and requiring very little further processing, i.e., cooking, in order that they may be listed on a menu and served to hungry guests.

Finally, this old man, gripping his check in his bony paw, has meandered over, and is staring into the kitchen, irately inquiring about this mysterious woman who has offered to buy him a meal, but no one on staff seems to know to whom he might be referring. Neither does anyone seem to know what to make of this man, nor what to do about the issue. There doesn’t seem to be a manager in.