Portland 2019: One Last Show

Actually in Idaho, but I just discovered these photos and they're the only ones I have of any of our shows.
First three photos courtesy of Lounge at the End of the Universe, Boise.

Proof that I did in fact play cello

Jessie Bear! He's a bear.

I was an emotional mess on July 2nd, the day we drove into Missouri, and it wasn't just because of the landscape. I would soon be seeing my parents and some of my friends after being gone for nearly five months, and I would also be saying goodbye to Tyler and Adrienne for a little while, and Jessie and Nolan for the foreseeable future. This little family that we had forged in this breakneck road trip would be disbanded, at least for me. I had already decided that I wasn't going with them to the Audiofeed Festival, and I stuck to that decision, even though I had second thoughts. I had to choose my priorities. But it was still going to be really hard to say goodbye.

This sign in the venue's bathroom made me laugh.

Our venue that night was a punk house in Columbia, Missouri, a spacious warehouse-type space adorned with colorful graffiti. We were one of several bands in the line-up, and I alternated sitting inside with my earplugs listening to the other artists, and standing outside in the humid night chatting with other people. I wanted to soak up this last show, really savor it, really appreciate the people I was with.

Our show was raucous and crackling with energy, the audience a mix of devoted fans and very drunk people determined to dance to every song. I turned my amp up all the way, and broke a few bow hairs, and sang as loudly as I could.

The last song we sung was "Earplugs," a love song that I had played with them on the previous tour, in 2011. In that year, also on tour was a shy young man with beautiful hair who walked fast and I was absolutely not going to fall in love with. Every time we played this song on that tour, I had felt a tug at my heart, wondering if it could be for me, and the boy with the beautiful hair had looked away because he didn't want to get caught staring at me during a love song.

We used that song for the first dance at our wedding, of course.

Now here I was, two thousand miles away from the boy who had become the man I'd married, but I felt our love, our connection, stronger than ever across the continent. Here was a love that both held me close and allowed me space, one that wanted to be with me all the time but could also be happy for me when I left him to gallivant across the country. It meant more to me than ever before.

The emotion I'd felt all day was welling up stronger as I turned my attention to my bandmates. Adrienne in a gunny-sack dress with golden spirals dripping from her hair, gesturing dramatically as she sang. Tyler, bedecked in ram horns with sweat pouring down his face paint, whipping his guitar and pressing his lips to the mic. Nolan, his curly brown hair falling halfway down his torso, his gaze focused inward as he drummed. Jessie swooshing his blue hair around, shaking his guitar for vibrato and tapping pedals with his toes.

The affection I felt for all of them in that moment, the blinding ache of how much I loved each one of them, almost overwhelmed me. It was a huge love. An almost embarrassing love. A love amplified and intensified by being together in a metal capsule for a week and somehow not killing each other.

We sang the last chorus of the song together, a cappella, at the top of our lungs:

Though this body may not hold up,

We will never grow old,

We will pass from life to life,

Though this body may not hold up,

We will never grow old,

And we'll pass from life to life!

Coming to the end of a trip feels like a kind of death. 

We drove to St. Louis that night, crashing at Adrienne's sister's house (also a long-time friend) at nearly four in the morning. Jessie and Larissa slept in one room, and the rest of us in another: Adrienne, Nolan, and I each in a corner on our own bed, and Tyler in the middle on the floor. The air was sticky and warm; we turned on the fan, flicked off the lights, and laid spread-eagled on top of the blankets to try to cool off. Outside, crickets hummed.

My body was beyond exhausted, confused about the time zone, begging me for sleep. But sleep meant bringing this trip to an end. Sleep meant waking up and being driven to my parents' house for the next phase of the journey— one I was dearly looking forward to, but one that didn't ease the pain of saying goodbye to this phase.

"Tell us a ghost story, Tyler," I murmured into my pillow.

Tyler paused for a second, then began to weave a story from his past, about a summer night and a ghostly train. His voice was a low hum, the images taking shape in my tired brain. 

I didn't want this group— this family— to break up. I wanted to keep touring forever, keep basking in this love and friendship and shared experience. I wanted to hold tightly, to possess this week, to grasp the magic in my fists.

But that's not what travel is about.

Travel is learning to love quickly and deeply, and then to let go.

Tyler's story ended with a spooky flourish, and for a few sleepy minutes we talked about ghosts, and time, and things we didn't understand. The conversation dwindled into silence, exhaustion finally having its say.

I laid in the darkness, still glowing with the love I felt for each person in the room. I wanted to say something, wanted to tell them how I felt, but I didn't want anyone to feel obligated to say "I love you" back. I didn't need reciprocity; I loved them whether they liked it or not.

So instead of saying anything, I snuggled into bed and fell asleep with a smile on my face.

But I hoped they felt it. I think it was implied.

~~~

Portland 2019: Colorado to Kansas

The first day of July dawned with a splash of white gold across the clouds. My eyes fluttered open, my neck refused to move for a few seconds, and I realized with relief that I had managed to sleep a whole 1.5 hours in the van. I slid the door open as quietly as I could and hopped out into the cool, breezy morning.

We were in the "Kansas" part of Colorado: huge wind turbines wheeled nearby, and flat green fields stretched out as far as I could see. I could feel the sleep deprivation dragging at me, but I also felt a bit smug that I hadn't allowed my circumstances to dictate whether or not I could be happy. A great-tailed grackle flew down in front of me, cocked its head sideways, and loudly cackled. 

After everyone got shots of coffee, we took off on the road, heading to Wichita. Adrienne got on Priceline and booked a hotel that would be ready for us as soon as we got to town, and I reveled in the knowledge that I'd get the chance to take a long nap before the show tonight. 

The unusually rainy year for the Midwest made Kansas greener than I had ever seen it: I remembered most of the state being a barren brown flatland, but this time it was a feast for the eyes (well, for someone who appreciates the Midwest, at any rate): cultivated green patchworked with unplowed brown and golden grain, with drifts of milkweed growing in the ditches, and cricket pumps, windmills, and grain silos dominating the flat landscape. I looked out the window and daydreamed about the farmland converting to an edible perennial prairie ecosystem (which the Land Institute, based in Salina, is working on). The weather grew hotter and more humid, and soon I was soaked in sweat.

We pulled into the Days Inn a little after 3:00, and walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant. We crammed into a booth, sticky with sweat despite the air conditioning, and munched on tacos and quesadillas while talking about Enneagram types. I felt relatively awake for the conversation, but my eyes started to droop as we walked back to the hotel; I desperately needed sleep.

Back in our room, I was ready to collapsed. Tyler and Adrienne got one bed, and Jessie and Nolan the other, and I staked out the corner by the air conditioner where I could pile all the available blankets into a sort of nest. After I took a shower, and had an unplanned and short-lived tickle war with Tyler (beginning with him taking a flying leap to shoulder-slam into me, and ending with me falling off the bed laughing hysterically in defeat), I crawled into my nest, put in earplugs, and slept for three hours straight.

Jessie playing his set

Our show that night was at a tiny bar, crammed with locals who listened in rapt attention— a welcome change from the sparse and rather distant crowds of the past two nights. One artist sat at the front and sketched with pens for our entire show, ending up with an illustration of two armadillos toting a shotgun, which somehow seemed perfectly appropriate. The band who played after us had a cello and a banjo, so of course I was excited about that! 

The show started and ended late. I stepped outside, listening to the roar of the cicadas, looking at a nearby mimosa tree in bloom under a streetlight, and feeling the sticky air on my skin. It was still stupidly hot, even at two in the morning, but it felt good. It felt right. It felt like home.

After buying groceries at Walmart (is it possible to not feel like a zombie when you're wandering around Walmart at two in the morning?), we regrouped at the hotel room, threw back some hummus wraps, and crawled into our beds, giggling at some stupid joke that someone said that probably wasn't funny but was hilarious at the time.

I realized that tomorrow would be my last show with them. I gulped. And then I immediately conked out.

~~~

Portland 2019: Utah to Colorado

June 30th dawned with the usual half-asleep shuffle of getting packed up for the day, and we left Logan early for another very long drive, this time to Denver.

I read a lot, and we talked a lot (well, mostly the rest of us listening while Nolan and Adrienne discussed various aspects of art, such as the difference between art and craft, and whether or not art needs an audience), and I watched the scenery a lot. Adrienne read aloud snippets of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. We passed around bags of trail mix and ate the last of the hummus.

Utah began as marshland with sandhill cranes, then rose up in dramatic shaggy cliffs and spires amid gnarled pines, at last flattening out into open plains, running into the next state. Wyoming was silver gray and wide open, with blue rainclouds that ebbed and flowed. Colorado was rocky and full of bristly pines, with snowy crags glowing in the distant sunbeams.

In fulfillment of my wish, we saw several herds of antelope grazing among the sagebrush, including many pairs of fawns. I'm fascinated by these Ice-Age creatures, which adapted to outrun a prehistoric species of cheetah, and still could if their predators hadn't gone extinct. There is a kind of ancientness to them, a weirdness, a sadness. I never get tired of seeing them. 

I was hitting the point in the trip where sleep deprivation was catching up to me; I'm incapable of sleeping in a car, and was running on fewer hours than I was used to. By the time we arrived in Denver, I was ready to find a cozy couch and take a nap.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that. I sat in the green room— a small room with leather couches and every square inch of wall plastered with band stickers— and tried to muster some energy. 

It was another low turn-out for our show that night, and afterward I curled up on the couch backstage and wished I could go to sleep. We didn't have a place to stay that night, and I knew we'd end up sleeping in the van, but I was exhausted and didn't want to. I considered offering to pay for a hotel room, but immediately realized that it wasn't worth it to me. Or any of us. It'd be super late by the time the show finished, and we had to leave early the next morning anyway. We'd be sleeping in the van tonight for sure. I struggled with myself. I struggled with feeling grumpy and upset. 

And then the small voice, unexercised for many years, whispered, "This will be a good story later, if you let it." 

After a pause, followed by, "Suck it up, you old grump." And I laughed at myself.

We packed up the van and piled in, cramming ourselves between pillows and dirty laundry and half-empty bags of chips. Tyler drove for an hour and pulled into a truck stop, and the five of us sprawled into yoga-like positions to try to get a couple hours of sleep. No one complained. We were all in this together.

Lying half on top of someone's backpack and half on top of the kick drum, my feet tangled up in the armrest of my chair, I closed my eyes and listened to my bandmates' breathing. Everyone seemed to be asleep. They were all very silent sleepers. I wondered if it was creepy to be lying there in the dark just listening to people breathe while they were asleep. I suppressed the urge to laugh. My grumpiness had turned to giddiness. I pretended I was on a spaceship and everyone was in stasis but me and it was my job to keep everyone alive so we could land on the planet safely.

I tried to meditate. I mentally listed things I was thankful for— nice weather for sleeping in a car (we had the door cracked, and a cool breeze filtered in); good friends; a free ride to St. Louis; that pizza we'd gotten last night; the burritos that Tyler and Adrienne had bought us today; that my cello had stayed in tune at the show tonight; that I'd seen so many antelope. The list of good things grew longer and longer: cuddles with Adrienne when I was tired or just needing a hug; the way Tyler crashed his shoulder into mine whenever we walked by each other; Nolan's jokes that were funny at first and then stopped being funny but then became funny again through sheer repetition; the way Jessie says hello by flashing the sign of the horns at you like he's at a rock concert; that I was getting to spend a week road-tripping through incredible scenery with these beautiful people.

I still basically didn't get sleep that night, but it didn't matter. This was the stuff that travel stories are made of.

~~~

Portland 2019: Idaho to Utah

On June 29th, a couple hours after we had said goodbye to our hosts in Boise who let us crash at their bachelor pad, I wrote this in my journal:

On the road to Utah! Last time we drove through this part of Idaho, I thought it was a barren wasteland. But because of our time spent at Willow Creek farm near Fairfield two years ago, now I look on the landscape with a sense of familiarity and fondness. White-tipped navy-gray mountains, swaths of green farmland or green-gold grassland, the occasional pond or canal: but mostly miles upon miles of sagebrush plains. Hazy stratus clouds float above. I've seen hawks dogfighting and pelicans soaring over a reservoir. I hope I get to see an antelope soon.

Okay, maybe it was a little barren. Still pretty, though.

Our show tonight would be in Logan, Utah, a smallish town about an hour north of Salt Lake City. The landscape grew increasingly dramatic as we approached, and we soon learned that the town rested in a valley filled with a sprawling marshland, full of wild birds and paddle-boarders. 

Since it was a relatively short drive, we had some time to kill before loading into the music venue, so we walked around the downtown, poking into antique stores, marveling at the poster that advertised decorative dental fillings, catching glimpses of the Mormon temple on a nearby hill, and eating hummus wraps and cheap ice cream cones at a local grocery store.

The venue, a black-box-theater-style setting with twinkle lights and local artwork adorning the walls, was beautiful, but the show was dismally attended (although those who did show up were enthusiastic). I felt grumpy because my cello kept slipping out of tune, making it impossible for me to play well (I was often transposing a quarter-step to half-step up, depending on which string!). We played a fairly short set, and then I retreated into the green room, huffing as I sat down on the couch and wondering if my cello would ever be in tune again. 

My costume that night

This graffiti in the bathroom made me smile.

The night improved when we learned that 1) we were allowed to sleep at the venue that night, and 2) instead of the normal drink tickets that bars give bands, this venue handed out tickets for slices of pizza from a nearby parlor. Pizza makes everything better!

Indeed, I felt downright happy once we returned to the venue with pizza in hand, along with a bag of cherries we'd bought earlier that day. Nolan plugged his phone into the sound system and began playing some Scandinavian and Celtic-inspired bands that he likes, and the five of us sat around and spat cherry pits into napkins and talked about the music and about Utah and about the bands we like. I ended up giving everyone back rubs (everyone's muscles were completely knotted from so much time in the car), and Adrienne gave me a back rub, and then I curled up on a couch, listening to my band mates' sleepy conversation as everyone settled onto various couches and the floor (and a row of hard chairs, in Nolan's case), brushed their teeth, brushed their hair, did all those little things you do when you're traveling together and you're in each others' space.

I think that's the moment where I really began to feel like the band— even Jessie and Nolan, whom I still didn't know very well— were family. I still missed Zach, but I was anything but lonely. No matter what the next few days of tour would bring, I was with my family, and because of that, it was going to be good.

~~~

Portland 2019: Oregon to Idaho

The tour line-up! Jessie, Nolan, Tyler, Adrienne, and me

As previously mentioned, at the end of June, I toured for seven dates with the regressive-pop post-punk dark-Americana band Insomniac Folklore. A lot has passed since my last blog entry: a whirlwind cross-country trip, very intense time with family and friends, unforgettable memories, becoming completely undone but in a good way, and embracing the first day of my third decade on the planet.

It was kind of a crazy two weeks.

Now I'm in post-trip crash, and my mind and body are completely confused about where I am and what's going on. But amid these fragments, I'm trying to scrape together some sort of sequence of events to share what the tour was like, and why it was the perfect way to end my 20's.

Let's start on June 28th, which was the third tour date, but the first day that we actually left Oregon and I had to say goodbye to Zach. 

It was early morning— we had to drive to Boise, which is seven hours if you don't stop, so everyone was bustling around the van, figuring out last-minute where to pack everything. Five people and all their instruments, gear, and personal items crammed into one van was going to get interesting. I puts dibs on the captain chair in the middle, with Tyler and Adrienne up front and Nolan and Jessie crammed into the back.

Zach and I kissed in the hot sunshine, and I think both of us looked like lost puppies as Tyler pulled out and we waved goodbye. It would be about two weeks before we'd see each other again, but I reminded myself that we had both agreed to this— and also felt a bit curious about what it would be like to be apart for a while.

We weathered a traffic jam getting out of Portland, then sailed down the Columbia Gorge. I watched out the windows as the landscape changed, hour by hour, from mossy forest to open rangeland to barren hills.

The group was fairly quiet, occasionally making commentary about the scenery or dropping a dry joke (usually from Nolan or Jessie in the back). We stopped at a gas station and bought blueberry donuts and I ate three of them. 

This is actually what about half of Oregon looks like.

Oregon crawled by. I read an entire memoir (Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot). I wrote (without regard to grammar) in my journal:

Although I'm hot right now in the non-air-conditioned van, mountains streaked with snow pass by off to the right. Eastern Oregon is green in the foreground where sprinklers have tread, dusty sage where they have not, navy blue at the roots of the mountains, clumps of sagebrush, tips of snow, purple vetch and tiny yellow wildflowers. Ahead and to the left, sage-colored hills smeared with the shadows of clouds. Cumulus clouds stretching and dissolving, frozen in motion. Hot sun on my arm… A new world. A new chance to live.

When I think of Zach, I picture him back home in St. Louis. This tour, this sense of travel, alienates me from the life we've been living, makes me forget Vancouver as surely as I'd forgotten St. Charles before. It's an eerie but a comfortable feeling.

At last we were climbing a stretch of highway leading up to a plateau, a long and difficult climb. Adrienne and I were chatting about personal boundaries and how hard it is to have them when the van began to lose power, buck, and misfire. Our conversation fell silent as Tyler shifted and reshifted the gears. This could get interesting…

We pulled over at a scenic overlook, and Tyler looked under the hood while the rest of us waited quietly for the verdict. Adrienne pulled out her phone and began Googling the problem, and we started driving again, praying and coaxing the van up the rest of the mountain.

Fortunately, Tyler and Adrienne are used to such car troubles, and we stopped at a tiny town for a trip to Auto Zone so Tyler could replace the fuel filter. I wandered around the town in search of a grocery store (unsuccessfully; I ended up at Wendy's instead), and Jessie handed Tyler tools under the van. The sun was scorching hot, but I couldn't keep a grin off my face; something has to go wrong on every trip, so it's good we were getting it out of the way early!

After an hour, we were on the road again, running a bit late for our gig, but at least the van was still functioning.

Our show that night was in an art gallery with a bar called The Lounge at the End of the Universe. The organizers ushered us into a green room full of huge oil landscapes, and we were astonished to see a buffet of homemade food: chips and hummus, pasta and greens salad, tofu pilaf, quinoa tabbouleh, and even wine! We had just enough time to gobble down a couple plates each before the show started.

Jessie began by playing his solo set (check out Jessie Bear!), followed by a delightfully nihilistic accordion band called A Mighty Band of Microbes.

Then we were up, taking the stage in our bold white-and-sand-colored costumes, our faces painted, our bodies sweating in the lights. Our audience included several long-time fans, and as we played I could feel the energy crackling in the crowd. That was the only night I had a vocal microphone as well, and I sang. I sang very loudly. 

We sang about all the usual stuff: how everything will burn, the uselessness of life, walking in a city after dark, the apocalypse, Moses, finding God in the desert, how you should listen to your parents but not trust the government, kids these days, the courage and defiance of continuing to live, and everything in between.

On the last song, Tyler and Adrienne sang the chorus, "You are whole, You are holy, You are whole, You are holy," and I belted out in counterpoint, "There is so much blood, there is so much blood, there is so much blood." I sang until my throat was sore and tears were leaking from my eyes.

I slept well that night.

~~~

Portland 2019: On the Road with Insomniac Folklore

This doggie though...

It's tour time again! After a few years of only occasional one-show meet-ups with Insomniac Folklore— the band I toured with in 2011 where I met Zach— I'm getting to go on tour with them again! 

Hazel fields on the way to Roseburg

Tyler and Adrienne at the Bill Frisell concert

The past couple days have been full of road-tripping, hanging out in Roseburg, Oregon, lots of band practice, and two concerts— one by Bill Frisell and Trio at the riverfront park in Roseburg, and one by Insomniac Folklore at the Draper Tavern. Yesterday marked the first show of our tour, which began in Roseburg and will continue out to the Audiofeed Festival (although I'll be hopping off in St. Louis). 

There are five of us on this tour: Tyler on lead vocals and guitar, Adrienne on vocals, Jessie on guitar, Nolan on drums, and me on cello. (I just picked up the cello a couple months ago, and although it's similar enough to violin that I learned it fairly quickly, it's still a challenge to play, which is part of the fun.) Zach and I agreed that he will stay in Vancouver and keep working while I go on this trip, for several reasons. He's coming to show tonight, but I'm already getting pangs of how much I'm going to miss him. I haven't been on a trip without him since back when we were dating!

Someone asked me to describe the kind of music that Insomniac Folklore plays, and I hesitated, because my old standby— "barrel-aged cabaret punk"— isn't as accurate to this particular line-up. We're a little bit punk, a little bit metal, a lot western, with a spattering of folk. This tour we are intense performance artists dressed in flowing white garments with white face paint. Tyler wears ram horns on his head. Behind us, an elaborate backdrop that Adrienne made depicts a northwestern forest with our name spelled out in sequin constellations. And we sing about atoning blood and the Exodus and environmental disaster and trying to hold it together in a confusing world. Playing this particular line-up is intense, both physically and emotionally.

The tavern last night was packed out, with people whooping and cheering us on through our set. I got several nice compliments on my cello (although some of the people thought it was a violin), and was followed around (and possibly hit on? I couldn't tell) by some terribly drunk men, one of which eventually wandered off and the other of which Nolan engaged in conversation, allowing me to escape to the other side of the room. I'm hoping that there won't be as many stupidly drunk people at future shows!

In the meantime, Tyler is making pad Thai and I'm mentally gearing up for another show, tonight in Portland. I'm really looking forward to playing some more with these guys! 

~~~

Cornfields

Ever heard of Mackinaw, Illinois? Yeah, me neither. It’s a tiny town that Insomniac Folklore passed through on our tour last summer. We were on our way to Mamma Linda’s Hog Roast, an annual stopping point for about a dozen of the bands on their way to Cornerstone Music Festival. Because of sound problems the show itself wasn’t that great, but I loved the party-like environment and the piles of free food. While Adrienne face-painted and Tyler talked to people, I sat against a tree, hoping to catch a breath of wind in the 102-degree heat, and read Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk. 

An excerpt from my diary when I started feeling overstimulated by the constant music: “I sought solace in the cornfields. I walked down Lilly Drive, looking at the orange-tipped corn and glancing at the pink globe of the sun sinking toward the horizon. The road rose, and at the top of its swell, I saw bluish heartland spread out before me, patches of cornfields stitched with trees. My feet thumped on the asphalt at an easy pace. I considered: I had a camera, wallet, iPod and chapstick… what else did I need? I could just keep walking forever.”

~~~

Chillicothe and My Illinois Roots

Last summer, I got the chance to tour with Insomniac Folklore for about a week, flitting from venue to venue in Illinois before ending up at Cornerstone Music Festival. It had been a while since I’d spent any time in central Illinois, and I had forgotten what deep roots I have there. My mom grew up in the tiny town of Astoria, a patch of houses and a downtown in between miles and miles of cornfields. When I was a kid and my grandma was losing her battle with Alzheimer’s disease, we made the three-hour commute to Astoria every other week. When I got upset about what was going on, I’d take a walk with Mom or my brothers. The Illinois landscape and small towns became synonymous with that side of the family, with sadness, and with the excitement of road trips.

Although I had never been to Chillicothe, I immediately felt at home when we rolled into town. We played a show at a youth center, stayed there the night, and then had some time to kill the next morning. I decided to go for a walk.

Down the American-flag-lined main street I walked, the only moving thing in sight. The sky was gray and the heat oppressive, although it was nothing compared to what we’d face later that week. Like all good walks, this one led me to the river. I strolled through a park and stared out at the wide, muddy-silver waters. At last I saw other people: an obese little girl tried to climb the monkey bars on a playground as her mother watched silently. 

I also saw a man sitting in an SUV with the window rolled down, reading a paper. I approached him and said a friendly, “Good morning. Do you know what river that is?” He just stared at me as if I was crazy. “I’m not from around here,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, loosening up. “That’s the Illinois.” He went on to tell me, in a slight Illinois drawl that made me feel comfortable, about how the drought was affecting the river. A beached barge on the far side was going to be their setting-off point for fireworks on Independence Day, if fireworks would be allowed. He pointed to a point far up the bank, beyond the tree line. “A few years ago, the river flooded all the way up there. Now look at it.” 

After some chitchat, I said goodbye and continued walking along the line of the river, though I was soon cut off from the water by a line of large but cheaply-made riverfront mansions, set back from the road. It took me less than fifteen minutes to reach the edge of town on that side, and I turned around.

The birds, critters, and town habitants I saw were familiar too: ground squirrels, sparrows nesting, robins hopping across the lawns. Chalky-purple chicory grew next to bindweed (morning glories). A person turned onto the main road, looking carefully both ways on the deserted through-street before cautiously turning. Four middle-school boys stood in the middle of the sidewalk with their bikes strewn around them. When they saw me coming, they stared as if seeing an alien, and were silent as I walked between them with a polite, “Excuse me.” When I was several yards away I heard them whispering and snickering.

I found the river again and walked along it in the opposite direction, past a strip of wetlands, home to a blue heron who stood motionless in the shallows. On a distant bridge, a train rumbled on its journey. A river gull screeched overhead, and then I heard the first peals of thunder. At a nearby house, a dachshund in a backyard began yapping frenetically. The contrast of thunder and dachshund was unnerving, and I hurried my steps back to the youth center. I felt like I had touched something familiar, and the trip wasn’t over yet.

~~~

Travel Stories: Tired Tyler

On my 22nd birthday in the summer of 2011, I was riding in a van on the way to Oregon with my bandmates. It was about five in the morning, and although Amanda and Adrienne were both snoozing, and sleep was tugging heavily on me, I was still awake. Tyler sat at the wheel, barreling down an unlit highway somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere, Nevada. He was headed to Oregon as fast as he could, even if it meant driving through the night.

I squinted at the dotted yellow line stretching out before us into the darkness, vision hazy with sleep. It took me several minutes of staring to realize that the lines were in the center of my field of vision, disappearing under the middle of the van. Tyler was driving in the center of the highway.

“Sir, what are you doing?” I asked.

As if it was the most obvious thing in the world, he answered, “I’m being Pacman.”

“Tyler,” I said, “please pull over.”

He did. He got half an hour of sleep, and then took off on the road again, this time driving in the correct lane. Nothing could keep him from returning to his homeland of Oregon.

~~~