Traveling Notes

While traveling, I try to become attuned to the various mannerisms and experiment with local foods. Clearly the sense of distance, the way people relate to the geography, is different then back East. An example; While seated in a cafe in Livingston, MT, I was struck hearing a woman great another that she hadn’t seen in awhile with “come around here much?” Unlike the time bound expression used back east, “I havent seen you lately,” the orientation in this commonplace exchange is spatial. It’s distance and location over duration; there, here and where before then,now and when…

Just outside of Missoula, MT, I needed to refuel. After pumping gas I went into the market to grab coffee. I was surprised by the display next to the cash register: Bison Jerky. Now that doesn’t appear in the gas stations in the Catskills. Grabbing the jalapeno variety, I got back into the highway began the long climb to Lookout Pass and Idaho. I’m not much of a jerky eater, but in this place preserving strips of meat as jerky finally made sense to me. Sustenance for the distances.

My host in Idaho, publisher Lon Woodbury, shared his process of feeding the sourdough he’s been working with since 1980.  I’ll let you discover this sourdough mystery in his words.

Two poet’s I admire, Charles Olson and Ed Dorn, delved into the image of the West in there work. The more time I spend out West, and I think the word out is key, the more I’m able to attune with the reality they sensed and wrote about riding just beneath the commonplace.

(I’ve added a few other notes along these lines over in the garage.)