Monday, May 29, 2006

May 28


Ron and I are at the airport. It's been quite a vacation, and we've both had a good time. I said goodbye to Grace at the hotel this morning. I sent her off on the hotel shuttle. Then I went back to the room, and Ron and I got ready to come on to the airport. I-90 around Spokane has a lot of construction going on, so it's difficult to get around downtown, because the normal exits are blocked or detoured. I had forgotten how pretty (and how small) Spokane is. When I was a kid, it was such a big city. I guess it's all where you're at. It is the biggest city between Seattle, Boise, Salt Lake, and probably Minneapolis. It's amazing how empty the Intermountain West and the Great Plains are. I noticed that at East Glacier - from that point east, it's a vast plain. We joke about Flyover Land, and there is a lot of truth in the joke, except we fly over incredible beauty, solitude, a taciturn, tough, windblown, and sunburned place in America. And a part of my heart is still here. I still hurt a little every time I fly out of some western town and head back to Washington, the other Washington. I'm not an Idaho Country Farm Boy anymore, if I ever was, but that notion is certainly a part of my myth, and how I create my world. I suspect I'm now the city slicker. I catch my impatience with people, my ironic self. Somewhere in there, though, I hope I can find a boy wearing his shitkickers, and feeling the joy of being in a familiar, far away place.

0 comments: