The end of the Trip: Home, 16 days, 5,000 miles, and many thoughts later.
I could have driven through from Hazleton to home yesterday, although it would have been a long day, or I could have the taken the most direct and quickest route hope today, but I wanted to again take my time this last day and visit the local roads and places along the way, and certainly glad I did. In the very last leg, after passing north through Woodstock, NY, KI decided to skip a visit to Great Barrington in Massachusetts, more-or-less on my way home, as I haven’t been to Barrington for many, many, many years. But, kit as getting to br the end of the afternoon, and in the darkening day and evening you can’t see the scenery, and seeing and enjoying the scenery is one of the reasons for these trips.
I covered maybe 320 miles, and spent maybe seven hours driving the loveliest landscapes, taking the local, state, and back roads most the day. This part of the country lacks the awesome magnificence of the west, including the south and north west, or the seascapes and sun washed views and architecture of the south, for instance, but is really very beautiful. It’s the epitome of New England, even before it actually becomes New England, with the mark of autumn everywhere, and rural and rustic roads and views all along the way. Woodstock is not in New England, for instance, but it may as well be. The whole area has the look and feel of classic New England, not just pretty, but surrounding by views that are magnificent in their own way. There were lots times during the day when I drew in my breath and shook my head at a particular view, breath-taking in some cases. Beautiful is a maybe a better word than magnificent, if magnificence also reflects size and immensity. These views are those you’d find in calendars named America’s New England By-ways.
I drove north up into the Poconos, on route 209, where I spent my first summer here, in 1971, coming to the U.S. as a student exchange summer camp counselor, and the region, and Milford, Pennsylvania in particular, has kept a very warm spot in my heart ever since. I recently took a motorcycle ride to this area, maybe three months ago. I was glad to be passing this way again today, including passing the beautiful Delaware Water Gap.
Route 209 I remember; riding in the Poconos on my bike when I worked at the camp in Milford again in 1975, and this time had my motorcycle with me. So, route 209 not only is a long road, which it is, but it’s lasted a long in my memory.
I also took a few side trips where things were more rustic still.
I drove the Shawangunk Mountains Scenic Byway, which is a great name, and had some great town names along it, some from the old Dutch and some from the indigenous tribes that lived here, like Napanoch and Kerhonkson, and passed through quite a few as I headed toward Kingston, NY, which I wanted to take take a quick look at, and beyond that, Woodstock just north of Kingston.
Everywhere along the drive was delightful and ranged from rural, dramatic, serene, seasonal, quaint, regional, and, at times, breathtaking. The scenery now had changed from the dramatic and winding roads and by-ways of West Virginia to flatter lands and rolling hills and forests further into the scenic background. From remoteness in West Virginia to more settled, with the road passing through many small towns along the way. I think the landscape and the scenery started to noticeably change in Maryland and then up though Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, and upstate New York, following route 209 the whole way, from Pennsylvania through to Kingston. Amazingly, route 209 north turns into route 9 east – the very same route 9 that runs east through Amherst and then onto Boston. That astonished me. Route 9 is, for all intents and purposes, route 209 starting in Pennsylvania. The road to Amherst leads from Milford, Pennsylvania, the place I first stayed in the U.S.
I had imagined Kingston to be a crafty looking town, like its close neighbor Woodstock, but not at all. Kingston is small city with a population of 25,000, with central streets, both business and residential, that seem solidly working middle-class. It seemed like a nice place, but not at all like Woodstock, 11 miles to the north, with a population of 3,000, and a center of arts-and-crafts, Upstate New York, rustic quaintness.
Then onto Woodstock, a lovely small village, which I’ve visited 3 or 4 times, and Kaye and I were here last year when Elisa and Nate got married in Woodstock on December 24. A nice place to visit, any time of the year, and I bet it looks great at Christmas time. It certainly looked good dressed in its autumn colors.
Woodstock deserves time spent here, not just driving through it (which is also true for almost everywhere else I’ve visited on this trip). But then, time to get going. Here’s where I decided to forgo passing through Great Barrington, Massachusetts on my way home, and instead just go home the quickest way, saving close to an hour over the local roads as the afternoon was nearing its end. Happiily, I still hit local roads for a while though, heading north still and paralleling the Hudson River nearby to the east, and before picking up I-87, the New York State Throughway, passing through Saugerties, another old Dutch name.
The throughway here up turns out to be a nice road to drive with some wonderful views all around. Still heading north, up toward route 90 east, which becomes the Massachusetts Turnpike, the New York State Throughway is curvy and thickly wooded in every direction, surrounded by the rolling hills and mountains of the Adirondacks, with wall-to-wall trees for as far as you can see. It’s amazing.
As I drove further north, and then east on I-90, still in New York before the interstate becomes the Mass Pike at the Massachusetts border, changes were evident in the landscape, flatter now and different trees surrounding the highway, but still forests as far as you can see, in every direction. I was struck by how beautiful it is out here.
The road continued to be both beautiful well into western Massachusetts and the Berkshires, passing through or near Stockbridge, Lenox, and Lee, all lovely places with classic Western Mass charm. As I neared I-91, now well into my neck of the woods, it was heading toward dusk, but I stopped off to visit Elana on my way home, as I passing so close, and then Elisa, Nate, and Noah, before finally getting to and settling into my house for the night, and my trip officially came to an end.
I’d sort of started thinking about how far I’d traveled on this trip a couple of days ago, and started thinking it must by well into the mid-high 3,000 mile range, but I realized it had to be more than that. Nevertheless, I was astonished to find that I drove just about 5,000 miles, which seems unbelievable. Still, that’s what it was.
Post Script
So, now that this trip is over, what did I learn?
As I drove today, once I reached Maryland and the road became less challenging, I again found my mind wandering, thinking about this trip on its final day, its place in my life and its purpose, where I am in life, where to from here, and you name it, so I switched off the radio and kept it off for a few hours, instead just thinking.
I’ve had these realizations that the journey takes me, not just to places I’d like to visit, but also away from places I don’t really want to be, and that the journey itself, the overall experience and not just the stops and activities along the way, is most important. The journey is complete unto itself, because the experience involves doing just what I’m doing at that moment, no bills to pay or think about, no household maintenance or repairs, no shopping, no plans, just the journey itself, and is a one-day-at-a-time experience, its goals fully defined for that day. I don’t have to make or think about other choices at that moment. It’s being where you are, in that moment. The trip also affords me a time to be purely introspective in a quiet , solitary, and meditative way, something I don’t do in the daily life I live at home. It gives me a chance to deconstruct things, look at the pieces, and put them back them back together again, better understanding them and/or seeing them in a different way than before.
At home, I’m living a life that is routine in every way, just as it was before, I’m nevertheless constantly aware of the absence of Bev. A friend recently talking to me about his sister-in-law, who just lost her husband, said she described now constantly being aware of “the persistent presence of absence,” a most profound way to put it. Everything is normal, is routine, except that something is missing, and so the perception of normality and routine, the experience of normality, is “off,” so to speak. That’s where I am, in this version of reality, normal and routine in every sense, except there’s an indefinable quality now missing, which will now always be the case.
This life now, following Bev’s passage, is not about searching for or finding a new reality, but instead about accommodating this new reality, and adjusting to it, as it’s a reality that’s never going to change. I’m not wondering when I’ll find my new reality, or what it will be, as this is that new reality and it’s me that has to adapt to it. I think I’ll always feel the presence and weight of Bev’s absence, and hope I do, so it’s instead learning how to just be with that reality.
