Letters from the Divide Road Warrior I am a warrior on the Loneliest Road in America. I like the sound of that. Several times a year, that is where you will find me: cruising along Highway 50 between Ely and Fernley, Phil Roy on the CD player, one or two or three Irish wolfhounds in the back, Boulder sea salt–and–vinegar potato chips and Horizon low-fat cottage cheese on the floor of the driver’s seat, and a couple of glass bottles of BibiCaffè tucked into the door pocket—because some of the things you are not going to find on the Loneliest Road in America are organic food and good coffee. Highway 50 connects my two residences—my 120-acre ranch in Creede, Colorado, where I write, play, ski, and feel more at home than anywhere on earth, and my 900-square-foot half-duplex in Davis, California, where I teach, direct, and administer; challenge myself intellectually; and do my best to give back. I make the drive at least eight times a year and could name the towns along the way in my sleep: Lake City, Montrose, Delta, Grand Junction, Green River, Salida, Delta (Utah this time), Ely, Eureka, Austin, Fallon, Fernley, Reno, Truckee, Auburn, Sacramento, Mace Boulevard exit, and I am home. I also fly from Sacramento to Denver with some regularity for visits with my goddaughter Sarah, “tune-ups” with my therapist, and every home Bronco game. In Davis I am a bike-riding, yoga-mat-toting teacher who formulates sentences that contain phrases like target of opportunity and abbreviations like FTE and PELP, who has regular meetings with the dean and the provost, and who usually dresses up for them. I read my colleagues’ books with titles like Noir Cinema in a Post-colonial Age and Situatedness, and am trying to learn the biggest lesson of academia: when to talk and when to keep my mouth shut. I try not to spend too much time apologizing for my television, for my SUV, for the clothes I occasionally wear that bear the logos of Denver sports teams, and for the fact that I don’t recycle quite as fastidiously as everybody else. In Creede there is no recycling, no drugstore, and no movie theater. There I fix the barbed-wire fences with a tool designed especially for the task. I go to the Monte Vista Co-op to buy big tubes of Ivermectin horse wormer and Carhartt overalls on sale. I notice how different this co-op is from its Davis counterpart, where people take their purchases home in environmentally friendly macramé bags. In Creede I cut my own firewood with a chainsaw and talk to my neighbors about bingo at the Elks on Saturday night. There is no need for literary theory of any kind in Creede because there is such an overabundance of things that are actual. Cold, for instance (the temperature often dips past 30 below zero). In Creede I try not to apologize for the truffle oil, designer white wine, and assumed liberalism I carry back with me from California. You might think that the constant back and forth would be enough traveling for anyone’s taste, but on top of that I fly 100,000 miles per year. As a result, I know entirely too much about United’s entire fleet of aircraft. (“Oh, the 777,” I hear myself saying to the lady on the phone. “Well then I definitely want seat 15J!”). If there were a contest where you had to match every Red Carpet Club in America with the particular snacks they offer, I could win it hands down. I did all of my Christmas shopping at Denver International Airport for two years running, and the shoeshine lady in Sacramento Airport Terminal B and I are surprisingly close to becoming real friends. In the past 12 months, besides the frequent Denver-Sacramento jaunt, I have been to Majorca, Tucson, Santa Barbara, Portland (Oregon), Kona, Tasmania, Melbourne, southern Utah, Provincetown, Taos, Aspen, St. Louis, Columbia (Missouri), Tampa, Lubbock, Orcas Island, Baja, Seattle, Juneau, Austin, Whitefish, and Salt Lake City. Some of it for work (readings, conferences, and the like), some of it for fun, but all of it by choice. When I see it all written out like that, as I do on my annual tax forms, it starts to feel a little less like fun and little more like an addiction. What is she running from, the therapist inside each of you is asking. Somebody, please, send her to a Buddhist retreat and teach her how to keep still! But I’ve been to therapy, and to Buddhist retreats on four different continents, and I am beginning to suspect that my wanderlust isn’t something that is meant to be cured. I am beginning to suspect that motion is simply my medium. I need it, I derive energy from it, I am able to write because of it. There is nothing I love more than getting on a plane with words painted on the side that I can’t even sound out phonetically, going to sleep, and knowing that when I wake up I am going to be someplace I can’t yet imagine. I even love airports, the tears and balloons and teddy bears, the businesspeople mumbling into all of their devices—even the security line, for it is there that I marvel, repeatedly, at the adaptability and the cooperative spirit of human beings. No matter how many new sets of rules they throw at us, give us a couple of weeks to understand the difference between a pint-size and a quart-size Ziploc, to learn which sandals are innocent and which sandals are suspect, and we are right with the program, ready to strip, and fast—all in the name making our planes. Sky warrior, road warrior, not to mention river raft, dogsled, boot, bike, and skis. Even the Loneliest Road in America doesn’t seem lonely at 80 miles per hour. I am a being who loves flight at any speed.
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