Pilgrimmage Home March 2006

The Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tennessee. I was thinking only of barbeque and Graceland as we drove into the treelined neighborhoods surrounding Memphis. But there is a core of harsh reality that is held very carefully in the middle of the city, and that core is gestating still at the Lorraine Motel and the Civil Rights Museum. We held our breath as we stepped onto the pavement of the old parking lot, seeing, but not seeing, the white and red wreath on the second floor balcony that marks the place Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. This is a place in America where every person should visit. A reminder and a teacher of our country's sordid past, this place speaks of a history that makes my saliva tastes tinny. I was moved to tears of shame, regret, sorrow and helplessness. And yet, I felt like I was being given a brown paper bag filled with something glowing, light, regular, something like a seed of a new life. We left with a farmer's desire to plant.

Austin, Texas. Nikko, John, Ethel.

Rabbit Hill School House, Fairview, Texas. John, bell pole, and prickly pear cactus. Family heritage is something I don't comprehend very easily, but being here on the farm where John's grandfather grew up has allowed for the dust of generations (now my own family's generations) to settle beneath my fingernails. We spent four days using the outhouse, listening to the turkey vulture fledglings hiss in the sidebarn, clipping mistletoe from the misquite trees, building a post for the school bell. Most of all, we listened to Grandpa Steve's stories as the silhouettes of his memories passed over him. We talked into the night about what life was like, about his older sister having babies in the next room, running down the "hill" to the swimming hole that isn't there anymore. He sorely missed the rain, and worried every afternoon when the thunderheads gathered on the horizon but didn't let down any cloud-juice.

I drove the old tractor, but none of us were too sure what building i would hit first, so my tractor-driving career was quickly garaged. notice the outhouse in the background, and the "Grandma's House" with a newly installed air conditioner that seemed somehow a shame to use when everything else was circa 1941 (or less). even my shoes felt out of place


A good hefty bag of pupdeposit in Sedona, Arizona. Nikko and John.

So these highlight a very small fraction of our cross-country adventures, but it is a taste of the journey. we spent a good portion of our trip looking at old rocks and hugging dear friends and family. North America is a spectacular collection of landscapes and yet, our destination in the Pacific Northwest is home for certain. For now, anyway.