Amanda: The Road to the West

My route went eastward to the Thousand Island border crossing and drive that took south of the Great Lakes. As one raised on the north shore of the lakes, the creeks and rivers that flowed northward to our shared lakes always seem a contravention of all things natural. At Lake Erie, they could be seen coursing to their lake, bottlenecked for the violence of Niagara Falls and onto our Lake Ontario, a congregation at Kingston for a surge to the Atlantic, down the St Lawrence River. We will have watched that water at Kingston Sheep Dog Trials, perhaps without a thought of its origin.

Once a day of driving is behind you, all thoughts of turning around dissipate. You are committed. I stopped for the night in Ohio, making an early start to pass Chicago at the least traffic infected time. It worked.

Why there is no fanfare at the Mississippi will always be a puzzle for me until someone does something about it. A river whose name is uttered with similar reverence to Amazon, Nile, Danube Yangtse, MacKenzie—no lights, no special brass section playing. It was somber this time, with dull chilly weather and a rain storm passed over just before I did. The water roiled along, oblivious to all the chaos it would meet at the Gulf of Mexico, where Harvey was on the rampage.



For a Sunday, one would have thought the traffic on I-80 would be light. It was always heavy, all the way past Lincoln Nebraska. No breaks for the driver. The plains were well watered and showing how bountiful they be. Iowa was top heavy with corn. I nearly made it to Wyoming in one day, stopping twenty miles short. Next morning, I turned south off the interstate at Laramie, Wyoming, winding down an untravelled road for me, to Steamboat Springs, Craig, and on to Meeker. A breached credit card needed remedying and I needed altitude for blood building in the dogs. Lake Avery, up towards the flattops from Meeker, took me to 8,000 feet, the perfect place for a day’s respite and fortification from within.