From China to Peru: A Memoir of Travel

6. Over the Sea to Skye

6 Over the Sea to Skye I had an epiphany half a lifetime ago, hitchhiking in the Mojave Desert. Coming south from Bakersfield, California, I caught a ride to Barstow, too far or not far enough.Viewers of theWeather Channel will recognize Barstow, where the temperature in summer goes off the charts. Forecasters say that except for Death Valley, it’s the most depressed place in the country. Standing outside it on a day in summer, I didn’t feel that good either. I have friends for whom the desert strikes a mystical chord.The cloudless sky sharpens their awareness, and they can’t get enough of the burning sand and stony soil, varied by the occasional saguaro. But what they call grandeur I call banality.The desert appals me, wearying in its sameness and empty like the void. I prefer my landscapes serried, broken by peaks and troughs and refreshed with running water. Inevitably there are trees, the more umbrageous the better, not only for shelter but to give a lift to the soul. Even more to my taste are human habitations, not made by nature, made by man. Once in my time at Princeton the son of Sir Herbert Read, the English critic and poet, came for a visit. He came with an introduction to our great man, R. P. Blackmur, and Blackmur, doing a friend’s office, showed him the sights.Young Reed, donnish and very fey, didn’t look with favor on what he saw, though.“But Mr. Blackmur,” he said,“where are your holy places?” America does without them, no ancient churches or manor houses, no pressure of form.The desert is like that, only raised to the ultimate power. over the sea to skye 95 At the city limits of my way station on the road to nowhere, I stuck out my thumb and smiled hopefully each time a car sped by me.Night was coming on when I gave up and trudged back into town. Part of my dwindling stash paid for a motel room, most of the rest for a bottle. Lying in bed, I sipped away steadily, reading by the light of a gooseneck lamp. In a drawer in the bedside table I’d found a Gideon Bible, and flipping the pages I stopped at the Book of Job. What with the poor light and the whiskey, getting the words to focus wasn’t easy. Hemingway says his memory was most vivid when he’d been drinking and recalls howTurgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches burned itself into his psyche.That summer’s night in the desert the Book of Job was like that for me. “Only I am escaped alone to tell thee,” I read, assuming the role of messenger.The tidings I carried thundered in a young man’s ear. “For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.” Coming forth like a flower, we are cut down in our prime. End of story. This awareness didn’t make for depression, like the one Barstow is stuck in.The speaker wasn’t bidding me curse God and die, nor were his words spoken out of the whirlwind.Flesh of our flesh,he told of the nothingness we come from and go back to.That was mournful, no question. But the words themselves, describing chaos, put it in chains, the way we lock up a malefactor. It occurred to me that the writer’s job was like that. I had only begun to feel my way into the job and what it entailed, but already I sensed that it gave a shape to the pain and loss that go with living .The writer didn’t console us nor palliate the truth. But presenting the truth with an unwinking eye, he made it acknowledge a form.
In the heart of downtownAberdeen, the tearoom is theTastieTattie Shop. Today’s menu features tatties and chili, and the girl I give my order to is wearing a stud in her nose.Aberdeen, the Granite City, looks built to last, but the modern world, disposable like plastic milk cartons, squeezes between cracks in the granite.Across from the cathedral the Upperkrust Katerer has a shocking-pink valance over the store front. At Marks & Sparks around the corner, platform shoes and leopard-skin short shorts are on display in the window. 96 from china to...