Groundhog Day
A few days ago, I camped at a lovely little place called Catawba, where the Appalachian (hiking) Trail crosses the Transamerica Trail. I camped behind the Catawba General Store with a group of hikers, and we had a great evening drinking beer and swapping stories. (Some of these intrepid souls were "through-hikers", walking the trail in it's entirety - 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine.) The next day I rode a tough but satisfying 55 miles in hilly terrain and hot, humid weather, to Radford, where I discovered I'd left my iPhone plugged in to the charger at the Catawba Store. There wasn't much option except to retrace my steps (or is that, revolutions?) the next day, camp at Catawba again that night, and retrace again the following day. That day was even hotter and more humid, and there was something incredibly annoying about going over exactly the same ground, even though it was a very pretty section of the route. It really was Groundog Day. The same steel bolt was in the same place in the middle of the road; the same red plastic cup sat in the gutter; the same black labrador lay on the same front porch - and it still didn't lift its head or bark. All I could do was put it in perspective - in a 5000 mile journey, what's an unnecessary 110 miles? (Sob!)
Roadkill Update:
- More squillions of squirrels;
- Two deer;
- About a dozen snakes, some very large;
- One beaver;
- Lots of pretty little birds - red and black ones mostly;
- One opossum;
- Two turtly things;
- Other unidentified furry or feathery squidgy bits.
As I rode along a quiet country road, a woman in a car coming the opposite way stopped and leaned out of the window to give me an urgent warning. (Interpolate thick Virginian accent) " Now y'all be careful ya hear. I just passed a big snake up ahead there - Ah reckon it wus a Black Racer. Y'all look out fer it now. They're real aggressive thum Black Racers.""
I thought, "You can't scare me with snake stories woman. I'm an Australian. We invented the scary snake story. A Black Racer indeed! Haven't you heard of the famous Australian Leaping Groin Grabber, or the deadly Hoop Snake, that takes its tail in its mouth and rolls after you like a wheel? Black Racer, ha!"
Anyhow, no giant black snake raced out and attacked me. Disappointing, really.
What Church is that?
America, well certainly Virginia anyway, has a lot of churches. Little country towns which. if they were in Australia, would have perhaps one, have four or five. It doesn't seem possible that there would be enough people in some of these towns to fill them up, but they all look prosperous and well cared for. Maybe some people go to more than one church every Sunday. I had no idea there were so many varieties of Christianity.
My Dad used to say he could give people directions around Manchester by reference to pubs. Turn right at the King's Head, left at the White Lion, right at the Royal Oak, etc. Well, I reckon you could direct people around Virginia by churches. Go up past the Bethel United Methodist, right at the New Life Baptist, left at the New Harvest Pentecostal Holiness .... In fact, as you enter a small Virginian town, the majority of advertising billboards aren't touting local businesses: they're advertising rival churches, all competing for your, er, custom. (Perhaps that's not the right word.)
Many of the churches, like the businesses and private homes, are festooned with US flags, "Support Our Troops" banners and other patriotic paraphernalia. I've long been in agreement with Richard Dawkins that religion is a mass delusion, and I've now decided that patriotism is a contagious mental illness. Certainly, both are equally irrational. When you put the two together seamlessly, as seems to happen here in America, the result is positively scary. I'm rather glad I live in a somewhat less religious and less patriotic country. May it ever remain so.
Television and radio:
I carry a small FM radio with headphones, that I sometimes listen to while I'm riding. If you scroll through the radio stations here, it's much like Australia - overwhelmingly dominated by sub-intelligent crap, punctuated by advertisements that would insult the intelligence of a flatworm. In America though, there's another dimension to radio: the religious broadcasters. You can listen to ranting evangelistic preaching, or esoteric theological debates, (I tried to persevere with one about the desert as a metaphor in scripture, but it went for an hour), or uplifting gospel music at any time of day. Praise the Lord, there's also National Public Radio - not quite my beloved ABC, but relatively sane and restrained.
TV is even more fascinating. (I don't carry a TV to watch while I'm riding.) I watched a religious program the other night that was a direct broadcast from a Southern Black church. The minister was a large lady with an outrageous feathered hat, who bounced around singing like Aretha Franklin - without the voice or musical ability. She was backed up by a she-bop, she-bop chorus of swaying parishioners of all shapes and sizes, who also completely lacked the ability to hold a note. The result was a bizarre, cacophonous spectacle that held me riveted for maybe, a minute.
The saving grace (no pun intended) of American TV though is the public network. There's even a station called Book TV, where you can watch interviews with writers, panel discussions, reviews, debates and all sorts of other goodies. There's sanity out there: you just have to look for it.
Forced to stay in a motel because all the campgrounds were booked out for the Memorial Day long weekend, I lay back on the football field-sized bed, opened a beer, and flicked the giant plasma screen to Book TV. Who should come straight up on screen but one of my environmental heoes, Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, and Hope, Human and Wild, among others? This man's sober, sensible and highly intelligent appraisal of climate change and other environmental issues puts him in the same league as Clive Hamilton and Tim Flannery for me. He was talking about his new book, Eaarth - Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. The approach sounds much like Clive Hamilton's Requiem for a Species: a realistic acknowledgement that the opportunity to avoid catastrophic climate change has passed us by, but a manifesto for urgent and specific action to minimise the damage. I admire both of these people for their refusal to avoid the implications of serious climate research, and their commitment to dealing with the issues, even if others find them unthinkable.
Travelling the roads of America really brings home the unsustainability - no, the absurdity - of the contemporary consumer economy. Four-wheel-drives (SUVs) here are half as big again as the Australian versions, the iconic example being the Chevrolet Silverado - a thundering great V8 monster that should be called the Tyrranosaurus. There's little incentive here to switch to smaller cars. Petrol (gas) is cheap - less than $US3:00 a gallon. The majority of the giant SUVs, like their Australian counterparts, don't appear to be used for work. They're just monstrous shopping and recreational vehicles.
Just to flog the religious theme a little more, I cycled into Damascus today. My road to Damascus was, fortunately, not at all like St Paul's. No lightning bolt from heaven - just lots of heavy rain. Actually, I rather Billy Connolly's version of the biblical event:
(Interpolate thick, Glaswgow accent, expetives included.)
"What the fuck was that! Oh, it's you again. Did ye have tae barbecue ma fuckin' donkey?"
In contrast to my sometimes negative takes on American society, every American I meet appears to be friendly, generous and interested in my progress across the country. The land itself - at least the bit that I've seen - is spectacularly beautiful. No wonder they love it. I just crossed my first state line and am now in Kentucky. I'll let you know soon what I think of this next stretch.
No comments:
Post a Comment