Aberystwyth
to Birmingham train.
Wet
dark evening. Glowing eyes of houses.
No
home for me. Traveling across the country tonight.
Slide
guitar in my earbuds (John Fahey//Railroad),
distracting from gibbering male university students--cold war
politics and film dissertations---which I have no care for but listen anyway, sitting a row behind them.
I am
dressed in my pendelton hat with its garnish of cherry bark and
feathers, poncho, roper cowboy boots, blue jeans.
My rucksack sits on
the bench across from me. I smile at it, pretending to converse: how are you finding the road today?
Happy to sit on a
warm bright train going by stations with weird Welsh names?
Well,
I feel more self-sufficient than I do most days. Everything I need is
in that backpack plus a bag of fruit and cheese and bread. Remember
Mary Poppins pulling a lamp out of her handbag? I feel a bit like
that.
I
was going to hitch to Aberystwyth, but Max's mum (name unknown)
offered to drive me if we could go looking for a difficult-to-pronounce trailhead outside Tregaron. Driving in
the countryside: white sheep, wet wind, ancient beech trees all fat
and twirled, and hedges grown up like fortifications on either side
of single lane roads. We acquired directions from two old men
getting into an equally old landrover. In tweed and wellies we
figured they'd know. We drove into the sticks for awhile, talking
about waterfalls and the peninsula where I live. Hills to the east of
us were high, shorn grass cut with rock walls and a few creeks and
farm houses. It would be pretty to go walking in the Spring, I said.
Meaning it with a slight regret. God knows if I'll ever see it again.
We
turned back for Aber, eyes on the clock, without reaching the terminus
“....Left after the kiosk, right turn before the bridge...”.but
figured out on the topo map where she would need to go next time. I
spotted a hawk perched on a phone pole and pointed to it. She stopped
the car, reversed with the hazards on and said “take a picture!”.
White and gray/brown sort of dappled, turning its head about. High
enough above us not to be bothered, close enough for us to see its
eyes. It vaulted off grand and slow when another car approached and
we had to negotiate who would pull forward on the one-lane curve.
Though
I was unsure about depending on Max's mum for a ride, she was a fine driver
and quite sweet. Had a love of nature and pastoral life. I didn't
foresee anything nicer hitching, and she drove me right to the
station and gave me some pears from her garden. Little kindnesses.
The
train came in 20 minutes late, everyone shuffling about on the
orange-lit platform, buffered by chill winds and intercom
announcements. I'm glad I didn't buy back-to-back tickets after all!
El
tren: I'm going to the end of the line.
Why
is it that we can make lovely friends in beautiful, hospitable
places,
and
leave them? And leave them
again and again and again?
I wander with this question in my heart.
Not
everyone moves around like this, like I am doing. Three weeks gone by
in such a flash; no doubt three months will feel the same. And then
six, nine, thirteen.
While
I'm sitting on this vacant train, a whole night of traveling before me, I am remembering the overnight journeys I have taken
(airplanes excluded):
Santo
Domingo to the Pacific Coast, Ecuador----lush
night air, red frindged curtains rattling through the magical night
on an ancient crimson chariot, windows open, the long-awaited smell
of the sea.
The
Coast to Quito---when we had our
pockets searched before getting on, and broke down on a country road
in the middle of the night with the moon shining, and spent hours in
different rest stops trying to find the missing part, and one place
with hot food at 3am where we watched adorable raggedy dogs and the
mujeres bathroom was done up like a pink plastic shrine. Then we
drove the familiar cloud forest road, saw flames of a crash and the
black jungle on all sides. Caught the sunrise coming down the hills
in Quito so golden and profound.
Göreme
to Trabzon,---11 hours from the
holy outer-space rock lands of Cappadocia to the
shining Karadeniz Black Sea. The first station we stopped at, Kayseri, I almost missed the bus going to the toilet. On and on,
all the films dubbed over in Turkish, but they had some nice music
too. Confused at rest stops in the middle of the night. There was a woman who looked like one of those ottoman women from old harem paintings. She didn't sleep on that bus either. At 6am we reached the
sparkling coast highway, seeing hazelnut plantations and tea fields
for the first time. Bought fresh warm simit (like sesame pretzel
pastries) and ate them with the special relish of a sunrise after
sleeplessness.
Batumi
to Tbilisi and back: which was
on a rumbling clanging train. We had beer and fatty salami and the
compartments had bunks and sheets and pillows. I put a scarf over the
light and it was even nicer then. Thick Georgian men stood in the
corridor smoking out the windows, fresh nocturnal air sliding in, bumping along through the night. Our taciturn
compartment-mate snored. Both times. Till gray terrifying Tbilisi.
And then till sunny Batumi when we went back to Turkey.
Samsun
to Istanbul: I may have actually
slept on this bus, because what I remember is the slate dawn and how
it took hours and hours from when we entered the city to get to the
bus station.
Istanbul
to Thessaloniki: Sad to leave
Turkey after three months. A big bus hurtling through time and space.
Met a very amusing Chinese marble trader who called himself “Kevin”
and sat behind us chortling “hohohohoho!”. He shared about life
in China and gave us the highly-quoted, accented phrase “In China, no have
you-tube-eee. You know, you-tube-eee?”. Waiting at the border with
Greeks, and then everyone went to the Duty Free store to buy alcohol,
though it was 3am. Pink dawn, half asleep, looking out to see
postcard coastal towns with empty stone streets or a few
late-nighters going home.
As
for my experience driving overnight, it's mostly been in the
passenger seat in the wild deserts of Southern California and
Arizona. Coyotes, moonshine, reservations, cacti, No Tire
Basura signs glinting on the roadside. Catching
an hour of sleep in reststops that hum with snoring semitrucks. A sunrise in the desert is an experience like no other. Grateful to say I've seen a fair few for a northwestern girl. Nothing prepares you
for that color and clarity: the slow rainbow transformation of the
sky. Nothing shelters you in open space.
