Seattle to New Orleans Part 2: Coast to Cactus
Lookout Point off I-5 | Somewhere in Northern California | USA
“Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.”
— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
I’ve always been a sucker for a “lookout point” exit sign, and this one in Northern California was as much a welcome escape as it was a promise. I’d spent the whole morning testing my faith while barreling down the I-5 freeway in a dense fog, unable to see beyond a car-length in front of me. The short road up to the point lifted me out of the fog and dropped me off at the top of a hill littered with broken beer bottles and some haphazard fire piles. But it delivered a clear view of the freeway with all the semi trucks roaring by, and the sun just over the horizon.
I’m also a sucker for a place-dependent souvenir shop with good signage, and I stocked up on gifts of olive oils and stuffed olives further south in Corning, California (aka “The Olive Capital of the World”). Some of these gifts would be for my friend Sara, who was letting me crash on her couch that evening.
Sara has a deep connection with whales and the ocean. She organized a beach clean-up on her local Santa Monica beach and committed to doing it for 365 days (not straight but in total) for 20 minutes a day, and I wanted her to take me to this beach. The last time I saw Sara, she was pregnant, and I had a feeling her child would be an old soul, which turned out to be the case, plus a sprightliness that was irresistible. Her daughter handed me Play-Doh as soon as I walked in the door. And we did go to the beach, where we watched the sunset and kept our girl out of the water--a heartbreaking endeavor because she LOVES the beach and it hurts her to go and not get in the water, but it was too cold, she was too little, and we didn’t have enough time anyway. Instead, she explored her freedom by keeping us a safe distance from her as she ran across the sand. “Stay there!” she’d keep saying, holding her palm out like Diana Ross.
We spent the evening together with her husband as a family, eating takeout sushi at the coffee table, winding down for bed by reading some books to her daughter, then the adults getting some work done on our laptops with the TV on for background noise. We organized putting my car in the underground parking just before bed--for security and so that I could leave early without waking them up. I needed to beat morning rush hour traffic in L.A. and was aiming to get to my next host in Tucson, Arizona in time for supper.
Peep Show at Shields Date Garden | Indio, California | USA
Other than fueling up, Palm Springs was the only other stop I was allowing myself on this leg, for nostalgic reasons. I neglected to consider timing though, and quickly sobered to the fact that what turns me on about Palm Springs couldn’t be experienced driving around on a weekday at 9:30 in the morning. I wanted architecture and the Thursday night street fair, old cocktail bars with a pianist playing songs by request. Hummingbirds, swimming pools, and hikes in the desert. And then I remembered Shields Date Garden, a place I went 14 years ago on a trip down here with my mom, and still talk about. I love dates, for one (dense, sticky, natural not-to-sweet-ness, great with cream cheese at Thanksgiving). But it was also there that I learned there are no natural date farms. The pollen from the “male” trees has to be extracted and placed into the seeds on the “female” trees to create dates. Birds, bees, or even breezes can’t do it. This is something you learn in their 10-seat “Romance Theatre” showing a reel-to-reel film from the 70s (now put on a digital loop) called Romance and Sex Life of the Date. I go and I get some romance in the theatre and chase it with a date milkshake for the road.
This morning’s whole stretch was accompanied by Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire on audio, which I’d started listening to around Santa Monica. Yes, Edward Abbey is a cynic (which I have a distaste for), but he’s a cynic for a good cause (the environment). And it seems a natural progression to have come from the existentialism of Bill Bryson’s origin of the universe stories to be reflecting on the surface of the planet I’m driving across, and the desert specifically. But I can’t get around his sexism. For such a righteous son-of-a-bitch, he sure does trivialize women, generalizing their bodies in a coffer of things that bring physical pleasure, usually adjacent to some bottles of booze. I shut off the book and switched to music.
Just over the Arizona border, I pulled into a Love’s Travel Stop for gas, an oasis on the lonely road. You can be driving on the freeway for hours, with maybe two other vehicles within sight at any one time, and then pull into a Love’s and it’s like a city popped up out of nowhere. I had to go through a four-way stop to get to it, which was backed up 10-cars deep. On one corner was a broken-down van, and a woman holding a sign (“family needs gas money”) with an empty gas can at her feet. No one was stopping (including me). The scene at Love’s felt like total chaos. People driving on the wrong side out of the plaza exit points, cars pulled up all different ways to the 20+ gas pumps. I found the same chaos in the bathroom, people coming out on the wrong side of the entry door--one woman even just walked up to the front of the line and took the next available stall and no one said a thing (also including me).
Rolling Food at Love’s | Arizona | USA
I went to find a can of cold Starbucks Double Shot, which I’d come to rely on as my afternoon iced coffee in a pinch. On the really shitty overhead speaker, a distorted voice was yelling names indecipherably, alerting the in-house Subway patrons their sandwich was ready. I picked up a can of Pringles potato chips, drawn in by the uniformity of their display. On the way to the counter I walked by a sea of hot dog rollers, filling the space of an entire aisle. It was a factory of hot dogs and taquitos, with little tabs placed between rows to indicate the ones behind it still in the process of roll-cooking.
When I got to the counter, I noticed a few Twinkies on the ground, looking like they were repeatedly getting kicked off the shelf by people’s feet. I know this because the guy in line before me was the cause of the ones I was currently seeing on the floor. I also noticed a GIANT round tub on top of the Coke dispenser with really loud labeling that said “Road Warrior” in an 80s slash font. When it was my turn, I handed the Twinkies to the cashier and told her they’d fallen off the shelf, and asked her what that thing was on top of the dispenser. She said it was a drink container. It hit me that it was a version of a 7-11 Big Gulp, except bigger than I could ever imagine. Like those oversized novelty sunglasses big. “You actually sell those to drink out of?” I asked. “All day long,” she replied. I remark that they must have to use every rest stop to urinate. She doesn’t really care.
As soon as I crossed the Arizona border, western cactuses started showing up, standing out in the highway median every few miles looking like a big middle finger telling me to fuck off. This was surprising, because I truly love the desert, and I was looking forward to sleeping in it tonight at Peggi’s house. Peggi is my friend Alison’s aunt, related by marriage. Though her husband that relates them passed years ago, Alison tells me she has been and always will be part of the family and she’s excited for us to meet, saying “She’s the most energetic person I’ve ever known,” and also one of the best and healthiest cooks she’s ever known, and we’re going to have lots of wine and conversation.
I’d included Peggi on my last Glympse app update, so she could track my location via her phone. She was texting me though, and I pulled over at the next rest stop to text back, because my car is old and without hands free capabilities for one, but I’m also a stickler for spelling, so not a fan of dictation. An hour or so later she texted again to see my new ETA, hoping I’ll get there before sunset. I can’t stop to text back because I can’t afford the loss in time, as I’m trying to make it there before sunset, so I call her. Just as she asks where I am I pass a sign and read it out loud: “26 miles to Tucson.” She tells me that it’s going to be a long drive down the road after I get off the highway, plus it’s rush hour, so she’ll hold supper. I thank her humbly, though I feel guilty that I can’t get there faster, and keep driving. What else can I do?
This is a recurring theme on the trip now, and later.
What time am I getting there, my hosts ask. Well I don’t know exactly. I’m just dealing with what I’m dealing with—plug the address into the GPS and go there. I’ll get there when I do. I’m driving and driving and driving, and I’m by myself, and I can’t text them back or check emails. I’m driving ALL day, sitting, for hours. And yes, if I went straight it would take a certain amount of time, but I need to stop for gas, sometimes the need to pee arises, I get thirsty, or my stomach starts growling after a few hours. It’s not like I’m dilly dallying, but everyone is like, “Oh, you should be here by now!” I think about how this is human nature. We only understand our own sphere, and it takes some concentrated effort to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Including me, not thinking about how Peggi is preparing dinner for us—a gift to a stranger—simply trying to figure out timing.
A polite cactus in Peggi’s backyard | Tucson, Arizona | USA
Although I sure do try to put myself in other people’s shoes, because it’s really one of my favorite things to do. I think about why I’m writing any of this down at all, and consider that maybe it’s to explore the ways of putting somebody in your shoes that takes less time than actually doing the thing, or allows one to vicariously experience something they would have no interest in doing themselves, or even just a practice of realizing that there is more depth in the reality of everything. “She’s driving across the country,” someone might say and move on with it. Well, what is that? How do you really explain? How do you say I have to figure out where I’m going, set the cruise control, my gas pedal leg gets sore, I have to gauge when to get gas, what’s the best exit to get gas if I can’t see it? How much gas do I have left and when should I stop? If I’m hungry, what can I get to eat that isn’t junk, and where? So what time am I going to get there is a reasonable and simple question. But in reality, all of my senses and all of my attention is on THIS. It’s fully on this process. I’m just driving. That’s my only job, to drive.
The drive from freeway exit in Tucson all the way to Peggi’s house is ridiculously long, with incessant stop lights and traffic beating down my optimism of making it to her house for sunset. The sun has fully set by the time I pull into the back of the guest house, and Peggi opens the door. There she is! Her ball of energy soul in a tiny body. It starts immediately. She shows me both bedrooms, and explains why she chose the one she did for me: “It warms up faster in here.” I’m taking it all in, taking her in…and I love this. I love her. There’s eclectic art on the walls, brightly colored bedspreads, and flourishes of travels and life experiences in the books, the decor, the framed event posters, the furniture.
She brings me across the backyard, around the pool, to the back slider door on her house, where her two little white fluffy dogs are going apeshit. I’m delighted to see them and receive their little dog licks and jumps on me, even though she’s trying to discipline them and explaining who they are--the little one is new, and she’s trying to train him but “he’s terrible,” she says. She offers me a glass of wine and starts heating dinner up--a lovely chicken curry rice dish with a fresh salad, that we kind of put together as a team. We talk through dinner, doing the dishes, and well into the night.
What stood out most to me during conversation with Peggi was how appreciative she was of her late husband, and the credit she gave him for “all of this.” It brought her to tears a couple of times saying it out loud, that she feels so blessed to have this home, and it’s how he’s still taking care of her, even after he’s gone. Together they had lived on both coasts (South Carolina and California), but never here. Peggi decided to come to Tucson for no reason but adventure and because she saw the house online and really liked it. She had no friends living there when she moved, which is something we have in common as I’m headed to live in New Orleans.
The night went on and I had an incredible time in this window of Peggi’s life. I found out how she walks her dogs every morning—one at a time—around the roads in her mountainside desert community, and says her morning prayers and gratitudes during this walk. I hear about the last days of her husband’s life with all their friends drinking wine and telling stories around his bed. And how they had started and sold a business selling stuffed animal head trophy wall mounts early in their marriage. She also shared about a recent relationship that had ended, because he had texted while I was there, saying he missed her cute feet, which I loved hearing because I had been admiring her cute feet a mere hour prior. We talked about friendships, and I shared with her that I’d defined friendship long ago as unconditional support--as a friend to someone you love and believe in, your job is to see things from their side, even in questionable circumstances. Whether it’s an affair, a bad relationship, or something else--there’s plenty of other people out there to snap to quick judgments. If I’m your friend, your process comes first and I will help you see it through.
On the way to the guest house to go to bed, I stopped to breathe in the fresh, desert air and look at the bright stars and moon. Although I don’t remember any dreams, I know I had good ones. The kind that swirl and expand all the good stuff you experienced, intertwine it with your old memories, your ancestor’s memories, your future, mix them into a stuffing for your pillow and lay your sweet head back down on it, rising awake to a shimmering light reflection in your room. The flickering reflection reminded me that I wanted to wake before sunrise, so I got out of bed to look out the window, and locate the source of the flicker: a hanging, peace symbol ornament in the garden, covered in disco ball mirrored tiles.
Peace Disco | Tucson, Arizona | USA
As I drive away the next morning (headed to New Mexico to spend the night in an old ghost town), I’m struck by the concept of time and experience and how it changes things. Yesterday afternoon, Peggi was an idea in my head, like a character in a book. And then there was the moment I met her, and she manifested physically. And now I’m leaving with an entirely different conception of her--one that’s touched my heart and makes her so much more.
I think about how this happens with all the people you meet the first time, from my nephews when they were born to different friends that I met in elementary school, interviewing for a job, or seated next to each other on a plane. You can never get back that moment in time when you just met, but oh how much fun would it be to do so, for a moment. But we’re so much better on this other side, being connected at the soul.
Reminiscing on the Brief History of Everything audio book from earlier in the trip, this is the theory of relativity.
Peggi asked to keep receiving my Glympse updates throughout the trip, keeping us connected. She’d also send texts with lots of emojis to check in, which I’d have Siri dictate, no matter how many times it was repeated. I’d giggle at the repeat of “smiley face with eyes squinted and tongue stuck out, smiley face with the eyes squinted and tongue stuck out” every time.