Wasting Time
Originally published in Oregon Quarterly
Spring 2001
Life, even for a writer, can just be life.
We’re back from a three-week, 7,500-mile trek across America, my two sons and I. It has been one of those Experiences with a capital E, traversing the country on the diagonal, northwest to southeast and back, in a 24-foot rented RV. My sons are 13 and 11, old enough to be decent company but young enough still to listen to me, at least some of the time. We saw what we planned to see: national parks, Civil War battlefields, historic settlements, the Mississippi, the Gulf, the Atlantic, their Orlando grandfather. But that’s not what made the trip an Experience.
What made the trip an Experience was catching a glimpse of a pale green Luna moth with an eight-inch wingspan one night in Checotah, Oklahoma. Or pulling into a gas station in Ogalalla, Nebraska just ahead of a pick-up truck with an eight-foot statue of Elvis bungeed in the back. Or the humid, buggy night we camped at Eskew’s Landing, “Mississippi’s Best Kept Secret,” a 200-acre former plantation. “There’s been an Eskew on this land since 1859,” the old woman drawled from behind the counter.
I was there, but I came close to missing it. I was almost too busy being a writer. ***
For the first few days, as we barrel across Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Arizona, my mind works overtime turning every observation into a story. My reporter’s notebook is on the floor next to me, wedged between the driver’s seat and a shoebox full of triple-A maps. It couldn’t be any closer unless it was on my lap.