Travel : A crowded West, lonesome because ..

Your journey is never over until you return from it to share with society what you have learned. Then and only then can you begin your next journey in life as the process repeats itself, as you constantly “become.” – Robert Ballard



Insert 1991 Vanagon here.

We’re rerouted back north to Everett – 34 minutes the LED traffic sign says – I recall all at once that I hate the traffic out here something fierce. The gridlock breaks a little bit – can’t believe I’m back on yet another bus – I couldn’t escape that means of transit for long.

A man from Arkansas and I strike up a conversation and talk – something about this environment as travelers is keen for conversation but outside these windows, the environment of humanity is not for me, right now. I don’t know if it is because I am still balancing in some sort of emotional claw-back where slight harmonic disturbances seem to upset me, something gnaws away at me about this place – but not the person next to me.

A crowded West, lonesome - the way of properly "becoming" here, as Ballard wrote, for me is thwarted while walking around, its something about age here, I do not seem to know how old people are but they seem to know me and use it in a micro-capricious glance when on the street.

The judging 33 year old Subaru outback (2005 model year) wagon driving Washington plate new REI rainjacket insert hyphens between all words maybe yoga pants type that are probably nice people and probably make 68,000 per year so just barely enough for Seattle or so I’m told but look like they do and it is that something that I cannot yet seem to explain to anyone when I go about describing my love for Vancouver and Coastal BC but melancholy for Seattle.

The train begins rolling at 18:30 PST – we’re paralleling Highway 2 through the misty Cascades, with its rushing rivers as darkness comes in the mountains – so many green rushing bubbles.

I’ve secured a ride in the morning by phone; “I’m back in your country,” I tell T.B, and “second favorite state.”

He knows it – a place where trees grow tress out of them as defiance to the logging companies that harvested the Douglas fir many years prior.

Pillow distribution and the rivers, they aren’t high, riffle pools are formed and the rocks along banks are evident … we roll through Wenatchee before most fall asleep.