Date: 2005-03-27
From: Swiss Miss's House, NC

To: Haven Motel, NC
Miles today: 0.0

So I got back today from my grad school extravaganza bus tour of the northeast only to find a mighty thick envelope in the mail with ten pages of journal entries and a note that reads, "dear sara, please do not kill me." I will try to do an entry or so a night so we can all keep up with Jess' adventures. Day 14, in which Jess goes nowhere but writes a lot, does stretches with a gong woman, preaches tolerance towards Republicans, analyzes the political divide in this country like it's November 3 all over again, ponders the fear of political discussion on the trail, and ultimately concludes that thinking is hard: Happy Easter Sunday to those who celebrate it! It's been a lovely zero day in Franklin, with a ride into town from Swiss Miss in the morning and a very helpful afternoon with local Feldenkrais practitioner Barbara Helm, who showed me a number of stretches aimed at taking pressure off my knees. Many thanks to both of them.I have been thinking today about the peculiar juxtaposition, in one day, of a morning passed in a proudly conservative household, and an afternoon spent with an alternative somatic bodywork practitioner who rings a gong every time she enters her studio in order to dispel the negative energy in the air. I've been thinking of the incredible generosity I've encountered in both quarters. I've been thinking of Swiss Miss's family, and of the occasional mentions of pro-life activism, the 'Support Our Troops' sign planted at the end of the driveway, of the Bush bumper stickers and the 'Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman' sticker-- all a far cry from the northeastern liberal milieu in which I grew up.My cardinal tenets appear, at least on the surface, to be radically different ones: that the way in which our most recent war has played out is worthy of as much concern as the events which catalyzed it; that one cannot responsibly isolate a discussion of abortion from a careful consideration of the social and economic factors which render it a compelling and necessary choice for some women; that the day Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, I was proud of my state.But you could not-- no one could-- spend half an hour in the company of this family without their kindness and generosity being readily and openly apparent. It is impossible to doubt that we share a deep concern for the well-being of our families and our society, and have simply reached different conclusions about what constitutes goodness.And yet there is this fear, still, in this country, or so it seems to me, that one cannot discuss political differences without the discussion necessarily degenerating into offensive argument, that there is an unbroachable chasm between an arrogant and disconnected liberal intelligentsia on the one hand and a close-minded and unthinking conservative horde on the other. This is the chasm most evident after the last election, with half the country sighing in relief and half wide-eyed in shock. I don't hold myself in isolation from this trend-- and it hardly seemed the place, in any case, to accept someone's hospitality and then challenge their political beliefs over the dinner table.So there is a strange reluctance on both sides to talk candidly (outside the choir of the already-converted) without dissolving into polemic. And as it turns out, there is an equally curious if never precisely stated, reluctance to discuss politics, any politics at all, on the Trail. The contingents of Christian fundamentalist hikers and unabashed green-blazing hippies notwithstanding, the vast majority of those I have met out here tacitly refrain from mentioning political or ideological affiliation. There is-- I think-- a sort of perception that to be on the Trail is to be apart from civilization and therefore apart from political concerns. That to venture into such conversational territory is a faux pas on par with loud and public cell-phone usage-- inherently inappropriate, and terribly ill-mannered.The sadness of this reluctance is double-edged: firstly in that to imagine that taking to a trail constructed and maintained to occupy not only a specific geographical location but a specific cultural and political location as well, can ever be conceived as an apolitical activity strikes me as dangerously myopic; secondly, in that a place where friendships are formed so quickly and immediately, on the basis of a shared frame of reference, and with hours of time for conversation daily, ought to be the first best place to break down the taboos surrounding honest exchange of ideas, not the last holdout against such a breakdown. (To be sure, there is still the issue of the overwhelming whiteness of the trail community-- but that's an entire discussion in and of itself.)I'm not saying that I need-- or want-- politics with my oatmeal every morning. (Ugh.) Nor that I find anything lacking in extended conversations about llamas and cow-dung contests. But there is still a difference between choosing not to discuss a given topic because other topics invite ready discussion much of the time (like what to eat for dinner), and refraining from discussing the same topic out of deferences to a perceived and implicit taboo. One is inevitable, the other deeply sad.But perhaps all that is neither here nor there. (Nor, as it happens, am I.) I'm in the long habit of thinking much of the day; Cuppa Joe said the other day that he supposed my mind must always be going a million miles a minute. I'm not so sure. Things quiet down out here, both within and without. It is a measured pace-- andante, as Jaime would have it. Walking.Thoughts become soft at the edges, and limited, or perhaps narrowed is a better word. Water is cold, and rocks tip beneath my feet. The woods are a burnished brown with hints of sprig to come, all but the groves of mountain laurel, already glossy and dark. I think of where my foot will land, of what I will eat come nightfall, of how far I have traveled, of the miles left to come. I think of my bones and my blood and my breath.It's harder than I would have imagined, thinking out here. I am walking through a hazy sea of ideas, but they float up and away and over the green golden fields, and my feet are in the mountains, a million miles from anywhere but here.