Journal. Travel and No
Yesterday was a wonderfully in-between day for travel—nothing all one thing or another. Sometimes the mountains were hidden by clouds; sometimes a gleam of light shone off a flank of tumbled stone. The sun had a good cinematographer’s eye, spotlighting an old cabin here, a stand of aspen there, the tissue-paper layers of mountain ranges. Fall colors were a mix. The aspens were about halfway to peak in some places and long past it in others. They actually showed better under gray skies than sun—a wan gold this year that strong light would have washed out. The river was glassy and troubled in turn; very little whitewater. An “intermittent wipers” day.
Touristy mountain towns were their self-consciously quaint and irritating selves. I could get better food at a truck stop in Gary, IN, for half the price, with adequate parking, an actual trash can to discard food packaging from the last meal, and the freedom to rest as long as I wanted. And in Gary, they’d be honest to your face about just wanting your money and then wanting their town back.
Only a few foolhardy souls in low-HP cars felt the urgent need to pass a string of half a dozen vehicles—including an RV-plus-toad and a Wide Load—all in one go in a short passing zone up a steep mountain with a blind curve ahead.
I may have grown up here, but I miss my desert and its wide open roads. The natural beauty, which is as stunning as always, is not enough to make up for what we’ve lost.
I made it farther than expected yesterday so should have an easy drive today.
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I said I’d rethink putting my journal on the blog after leaving V’s. It’s not working for me. Even making posts not discoverable, I’m too aware of writing with one eye on a reader. On the surface, these resemble my genuinely private journals, and they are certainly in the tradition of a great many log-style blog posts. But they don’t do either one well. I feel fundamentally dishonest writing a journal entry as if it were private when I know it isn’t. Some people think socially. I don’t.
I’ll leave these up until the dust settles this week and then fiddle with the blog layout and get rid of all the thinking-out-loud pieces. I certainly stand by my thoughts in all their accompanying blather, but I don’t stand by the Janus-headed way I wrote them. It’s too bad in a way, because I don’t trust thinking that isn’t provisional—hence my arguments with Emerson. I like that these journal entries don’t try to “pass” for certainty; I respect that. By putting only finished pieces on the blog I’m undermining an ethos I think is important. But “finished” doesn’t have to mean “arguing a point.” I can polish provisionality. Endlessly.
Goodness. What a lot of overthinking for something that doesn’t, you know, matter.
I’m off to enjoy this lovely campground among the aspen before heading down the mountain. I do look forward to breathing a little more oxygen for the next few weeks.