“The whispers no longer said hurry, hurry or rush, rush. They now said, slow down, slow down.”
(Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech)
Last year I missed the New England change from summer to fall. I was already in the Midwest – where things move at a different pace, by the time the Cape Cod leaves started changing and the Atlantic-infused air filled with cold. A year ago this month, I was in Iowa, prepping to fly out to a western corner of the US that I’ve visited a couple of times already, I was looking forward to driving two hours south of Spokane, first through the fragrant Ponderosa pine forests of the Inland Northwest then wending along the two-lane highway – often the only vehicle for miles, past the picturesque farmlands of the Palouse Region, where weathered barns decorated in American flags and colorful barn quilts provide visual anchors for the saffron oceans of canola and wheat that overwhelm the eye, and always trick me into feeling like I’m putt-putting through a bejeweled, alien sea.
My destination was a quiet, narrow valley at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers, where lie the small towns of Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington, the sites of my 99th and 100th marathons.
In this part of the world, the rivers run wild a couple of times a decade, so roadways are constructed with safety cutoffs and marked with flood signs. There are lots of one-way streets that never go my way, but the roundabout trips I end up taking are so interesting, such snapshots of a particular American time and place, that the detours are like little gifts rather than inconveniences.
The two towns, knots of squirrely main roads that curve through business areas that in some sections still hold their own but in others seem decades past their economic prime – lots of boarded up and rundown buildings, are embraced all around by steep grassy hills through which the highway cuts. These hills devolve into craggy cliffs at points where weathering and erosion have succeeded in wearing away the topsoil.
From the pull offs along the roadway that are designated viewing areas, you get to see not only the colorful farmlands on the horizon, and the spidery roadways and bridges connecting the two towns, you also get a clear view of the dangerously steep, corkscrew road below, now called the Old Spiral Highway, that was once the main entry to this area.
During last year’s visit, I stopped to admire the view, as I’ve done at least two times before, at the historical marker highlighting various parts of the Nez Perce trade route, and read a little about Donald Mackenzie’s 1812 trading post. While traffic steadily passed by, the only other person also stopped to admire the view was a feeble, older gentleman, all bones, face as rutted and worn as the landscape.
In between deep inhales on his cigarette, the man said he was a retired school custodian whose forbears had settled in the area around the time fur trader Mackenzie was first getting established. Because he was so familiar with the area, I asked the man if he knew who Sharon Creech was, and if he was familiar with her award-winning novel, Walk Two Moons. I explained that the climax of the story, a horrific bus accident, takes place just below where we were standing, and said I liked visiting this spot because it reminded me of some important things.
The man shook his head but said it made sense that someone would use this locale as the setting for a story about a tragic traffic event, because the old highway had taken many lives.
When I asked him more questions about the area, he talked about his ancestors who fought for the North during the Civil War, pointed to the boundaries that were once his family’s farmland, and explained how that immense nineteenth century family wealth quickly dissipated as farming technology modernized and big corporations bought up the land.
He told me a little bit about his two sisters, both retired teachers, and how he lived in another town now but liked to stop here to visit and remember his childhood whenever errands took him driving through the area.
For a few minutes we were quiet, then I said something about how peaceful it was here.
He shook his head, puffed a bit on his butt.
“You’d think you should feel safe in a place like this,” he said, as we both gazed upon the idyllic scenery below.
He must have seen the startled look in my eyes because he then explained that we were only a half hour drive from Moscow, Idaho, the town where he now lived, which was just a few years earlier the site of the University of Idaho murders.
At that point, I told him I needed to get moving.
In Walk Two Moons, “Hurry, hurry,” rushes through main character Salamanca’s head for most of the book, as she travels from Ohio with her grandparents to visit the crash site where her mother took her last breaths. We learn that it’s important that Sal arrive at the site on a particular day – her mother’s birthday, because a part of her believes that if she does so, she’ll find that her mother is still alive. The story depicts that childhood magical thinking process that every one of us experiences at one time or another in heart-rending perfection.
The three travelers, Sal, and her elderly grandmother and grandfather, are on track to arrive on time, then tragedy hits. The day before they are scheduled to arrive in Lewiston, Sal’s grandmother becomes severely ill. Her grandad throws Sal the keys and tells her to drive carefully. Sal is only fourteen and terrified. The only time she’s ever been behind a wheel were a few tractor drives on her old gramps’s farm. The thoughts in Sal’s head turn from the urgent hurry hurry to slow down, slow down.
Though Creech never outright has Sal say it, it’s implied that the big lesson for Sal is how important it is to embrace life in the present. Sal eventually finds her way to the Old Spiral Highway and in the pitch-black inches her grandfather’s car down it until she finds the crash site where her mother died. The story is sad and funny and loaded with life. It’s totally deserving of its Newbery Award status.
Today I was going to write about a phenomenon I’ve been experiencing lately that I think has to do with the changing of the seasons. All summer, it felt like time stood still. Each day was as sunny and warm as the day before. One week seamlessly spilled into the next. But this last week or so everything has changed. The nights are colder, trees are moving differently, flowers once so vibrant are losing color and blooms. We’re entering a new season and it’s happening too fast, in my opinion. I feel this urgent need to hurry hurry/ experience everything, everywhere because it feels like time is running out. I wish time would slow down, slow down. I suspect this feeling has something to do with aging too. I guess this time of year, summer to fall, reminds me too much sometime of my own mortality and the truth that life is too darn short.
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