10,000 Miles

Sometime yesterday evening I drove the 10,000th road mile of the summer. As I cruised the sun was setting behind me making everything brilliant. I sliced through over-stuffed green fields, the Indiana corn looking like emerald candles, their amber tassels glowing warmly. I am becoming unexpectedly familiar with the emerald corn of Indiana.

Three hours earlier I delivered my grandkids back to their father, remembering the days when it was him in the backseat, hurtling over the plains to visit family. These days it requires air travel to see our growing family. Saturday we’ll fly to Guatemala for the marriage of my daughter to the man of her dreams.

Today I did not travel great distances, nor did I wipe the poop off anyone’s butt. I’m at home, trying to process all I’ve done this summer, and what lies ahead.

I set out this summer to re-tool myself in the new focus of my career. That took me first to Atlanta and then Worcester, Mass to become certified in an approach to teaching music to children called the “Orff” method.

On my way I visited parts of the country I hadn’t seen, and determined to experience as much regional culture as I could. As I went I made some great new friends, and connected with family and old friends. Nearly every day was intense, and I think it will take a long time to process everything.

You can see a lot in 10,000 miles -

I looked down from the Arch in St. Louis, a grain elevator in Kansas, a mountain railway in Colorado, a hill on the banks of the Allegheny River in Pittsburg, the Vulcan statue in Birmingham, and the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.

I looked up at skyscrapers in Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Hartford, and Denver, and God’s skyscraper ironically named the Devil’s Tower, the stone-carved faces of our presidents at Mr. Rushmore, the massive and imposing Colorado Rockies, dozens of magnificent bridges spanning our great rivers, and the wild, ominous, and beautiful clouds above the Kansas prairie.

I looked out over the ocean from the deck of a sailboat in Glouster, over the rolling Appalachians of New England, over miles of corn in the “I” states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio), over the verdant Dells of Wisconsin, the fairy-land of Southeast Minnesota, the golden hills of South Dakota, and the lonesome grass of the prairie.

Ours is a beautiful country, and, as well, the people in it.

I looked at a lot of eyes. Friendly eyes, wondering eyes, eyes I knew and eyes that were new. Eyes that are watching death approach, and eyes so new they are unaware. I saw eyes alive with excitement and hope, and eyes dull with hopelessness and regret. There was pain too. Some eyes were red with pain, but sometimes it was hidden farther back – deeper pain, lonelier.

Some eyes had seen much more than I, and some much less. I showed some eyes fresh new wonders, and I learned from others the same.

To be sure, there is no end of wonder a person can see if he keeps his eyes open.

I had conversations about love and life, hope and renewal, pain and defeat, old times, coming times, hard times. I heard words of joy, words of peace, words of comfort and inspiration, and sometimes, all of this with the same person.

Sometimes we laughed out loud and fairly shouted with enthusiasm, other times we spoke slowly, quietly breathing heavy words.

We spoke of sorrow, heartbreaking sorrow, and also of joy. We spoke of death, and of life, and how to live, and how to die. We spoke of the past and the future, and, since we were all connected somehow, we tried to understand how one affects the other.

It seems every life has enough sorrow to break a man, and enough joy to save him.

I ate fried okra, shrimp and grits, elk burger, buffalo steak, Paula Dean’s home style, the best barbeque in the state of Alabama, cole slaw, potato salad, lobster, clams, shepherds pie, Fluff, banana pudding, and peach cobbler. I had fine dining, not-so-fine dining, home cooking, self cooking, and even resorted to fast food a few times.

I did my best to understand what makes the South the South, and the East the East; to understand how a physical place on this earth can change the soul of a man; to understand why some pray to God, some are becoming gods, and others only see chemical reactions. To understand what it means to be American, what it means to be a teacher, what it means to be a Fuchtman, what it means to be a human.

It occurs to me that in all of this one thing I did not experience – fear. I can’t really explain it. My Father-in-Law used to tell me (usually after driving his grandkids over the plains in a snow storm to visit family) that God takes care of fools and little children. I’m not sure into which category I fit, maybe both.