This Trip is Taking Me...

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I am fearful and exhilarated as I think about this trip, which starts two weeks from tomorrow. I’ve decided to relax the pace, take six or seven weeks instead of four, in order to stay two nights in more places. That way I can get to the historical society and library, talk with more folks in each town. I’m fascinated with Fargo and Bismarck, North Dakota, and Billings and Helena, Montana. These towns are peopled with hardy, resourceful folks, I imagine. My ancestors wrested a living out of the harsh North Atlantic; their ancestors wrested it from flowing prairie, enduring harsh Arctic winters.


I’ve got to read several books before and during the trip: “Undaunted Courage,” about the Lewis and Clark expedition; “The Last American Man” was recommended to me yesterday as a description of the men who conquered the West.


And I think constantly of “Travels with Charley.” I re-read the introduction and found solace for my trepidation:


"Once a journey is designed, equipped and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, a trip takes us."


This trip is taking me already.