In the Labyrinth

Donald Hall: One Road

(Photos by Peter Zelei/istockphoto and John Robert Shepard)

This happened across my internet-desk one morning and I stopped everything to read it. The poet Donald Hall wrote a beautiful and very poignant essay "One Road" about a journey he took post WWII with his very young bride driving from Oxford to Greece by way of Yugoslavia. It is one of those effortless pieces of writing, that immediately draws you in and holds you captive to the end of the journey. It conveys the desire (and fearlessness) of the young to travel as a form of self-discovery. It is also a detailed travelogue of a world now much changed, and a graceful reflection on a life that is only possible from a great distance (Hall wrote this essay when he was 84). Take a moment and enjoy.

"In December of 1952 my first wife, Kirby, and I left Vienna to drive through the Russian sector of Austria into Yugoslavia. At the border crossing, on a two-lane macadam road with no other car in sight, we stopped to present documents that permitted us to enter Marshal Tito’s country. Walking back to our car afterward, we met a man heading in the opposite direction, toward Austria. He had emerged from a big black car, and he looked important, like a diplomat or a capo. Seeing the initials of national origin on our small Morris convertible, he addressed us in English. I held in my hand our confusing travel directions. We asked the man if Zagreb was straight ahead.

He shrugged, and told us, “There is only one road in Yugoslavia.”

On the Road For A While

Yes, I have been a bit more absent these days. It has been a summer of travel to see my children and especially my beautiful granddaughter. And because we drive, rather than fly, these are long days on the road through some of the most beautiful and myth-making countryside. A return home is always jarring, settling into routine, into clothes that are tucked into a chest of drawers and not a suitcase, a bed, not camping mats on the floor, a big house, and not the dense too-close-but-in-communion-hold-up in a very small house with larger than life loved ones.

But I am transitioning home again, back at my desk now and digging into copy editing five of my previous novels as a precursor to sending them out for new e-book editions. I love it and hate it. Mostly, there is the cringe factor of re-reading novels written almost 30 years ago (where the hell did the time go??!) and while I steadfastly refuse to "rewrite" them, I am sticking to a policy of accepting them as is except for correcting typos, standardizing the spellings of made up names, and, most importantly, getting rid of the abundance of adverbs, the hallmark of any novice writer. Weird too, because really, I knew better-- but something in those first passionate (and frantic because I had two small children) efforts to get the story down on the paper and off to an editor before it was too too too late -- did not give me the peace of mind, and the space and time, to do that final edit.

So it is a pleasure to read slowly, carefully, and delete that which I now know is not needed. It's satisfying -- the novels will be what they will be, my writer's voice out of the past, but at least they will be cleaner and more tightly written, and with fewer publishing errors than when they first appeared. I look to have this work done by late fall. And then all five re-done manuscripts off to the agent. 

I might yet get itchy feet and bolt the routine to see my granddaughter, or a trip up to the mountains, or a long haul to the Atlantic ocean, to wet my feet. But for now,  I shall be here, an ant rolling words like seeds and saving them up in the computer. 

These photos were taken by me, hanging out window like a dog with a camera, barreling down I-10, the last leg of our journeying home to Tucson. We are always there just before sunset and for the three hours we drive west toward Tucson, the sky give us a a non-stop show. 

Shivering in the Pecos Mountains and the High Plains.

This last week we traveled from Tucson to Omaha (oh my stars -- this little lizard doesn't enjoy cold and biting winter!). On our way back, we were stunned by the record snowfalls that had occurred in our absence. From northern Colorado all the way down to almost southern New Mexico we were engulfed in snow, billowing clouds of steam rising off the high plains, and cloaking the mountain passes. It was beautiful, and I am just grateful that we were able to thread the needle between two of the record snows -- during those spare eight hours when the roads were plowed from the last storm, and the new storm had not yet settled on the road. The photo above is in the Pecos National Forest, that surrounds Santa Fe and Taos -- acres and acres of cedar trees covered over in deep snow. And below are two photos of New Mexico high plains -- one on the way up, blue and spacious skies, the other on our return -- like some frozen arctic tundra. 

It was for all the cold, however, quite beautiful and dreamy -- perfect for reflection.