178 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
178 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Tue Jan 8 09:48:03 1991
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To: wordy@Corp
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Subject: Part 9 of CAA #2
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WINDOWS ON WASHINGTON
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#9 in the second online CAA series
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by
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Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
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Centralia, WA (Mile 295)
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October 24, 1986
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It was dark, late: after midnight. The town -- Montesano, Washington;
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the brain -- mildly giddy on local beer and the fuzzy exhaustion of a 54 mile
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day. I lurked in the wet grass behind the Osterberg Motel, Maggie standing
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beside me and looking more than a little worried.
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I tried the bathroom window and found no handhold. My now- useless
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Sawmill Athletic Club membership card was tattered from the attempt to jimmy
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the front door latch, and no lockpicking tools were handy. I dug quietly into
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the wood around the window with a key, trying not to make a sound, but only
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managed a small pile of sawdust. This was getting us nowhere.
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I dropped to my knees, shivering slightly, and groped in the clutter that
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lay about the old building like the archaeological echoes of a dying culture,
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my fingers finding and quickly rejecting crumbled wires, rusty bolts,
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bottlecaps, and things unnamable lying there in the dank shadows. Somewhere a
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door slammed and I stiffened, frozen in the haze of a distant streetlight,
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waiting for the shout. But it was only a guy walking his dog, and he passed
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quickly out of sight.
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My hand closed around an ancient bracket -- something vaguely automotive.
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"Ah," I whispered. Prying carefully, wincing at the amplified crunch of old
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wood, I eased the window open. Giggling sotto voce, I stepped on an old bucket
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and squirmed through the opening, finding sink and toilet more or less where
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expected, both creaking under my weight as I lowered myself headfirst to the
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floor. Ah, travel. I completed the entry, found my way around the bicycles
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jammed into the stuffy room, and let Maggie in the front door -- number 5 --
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the one with the broken lock that had resisted every attempt to use the key
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given us on check-in.
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It had been a day of northwest autumn images... of woodsmoke curling
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white-on-white through thick morning fog. Of ducks, startled by our passage,
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scrambling across the Hood canal watertop making tracks on the surface with
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frantic wingtips and flapping feet. Of herons and gulls, Christmas tree farms,
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dogs breathing micropuffs, giant mushrooms like pumpkin pies, tiny ones
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scattered across logs like storybook colonies -- and the unnatural quiet of
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off-season tourist culture. A brisk morning.
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Later, on route 108, I pedaled in sadness -- bracing myself against the
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blasts of logging trucks hauling the carcasses of once- beautiful trees and
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leaving an ugly ravaged landscape like a botanical war zone invented in
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Hollywood. Now I understood the tree-spikers, as my surroundings alternated
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between disaster and grandeur, each underscoring the other. I passed from
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lifeless mountainsides of blackened stumps to great rustling valleys touched
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with the muted ochers and somber umbers of autumn... from harsh wreckage to
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quiet perfection with man alone the mediator. Anger. But through every
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mini-hurricane of a 60 mph logging truck -- at once fragrant with fresh-felled
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fir and rank with diesel fumes -- I tried to remember that the man at the wheel
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was just doing his job. Those aren't the villians at all... they only LOOK the
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part.
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They're only villians when they blow me off the road.
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We're southbound for real now; I'm writing from the 295-mile mark, two
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days from Portland. Puget Sound is way back there somewhere -- the people who
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made it feel as home now fond memories and database records. No more Paulsbo
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bread, ferry horns in morning fog, midnight milling machine madness, or sunsets
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over Manzanita Bay. Home is the road. I'm re-experiencing the major
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adjustment that has to be made when you switch from stasis to nomadics: a
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redefinition of "home" that lets a modular phone jack, bicycle, and the
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cluttered livingroom of an overnight host touch all the places in your heart
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that were once owned by your old hometown. Yeah, this is a qualitatively
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different lifestyle, and when I look into the eyes of people here in Centralia
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I try to remember that I'm even more alien than I look -- for reasons that have
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nothing whatsoever to do with speech synthesizers and blinking consoles.
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Anyway. The weather is holding, a record for rainlessness they tell me,
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and we're slipping away from winter on back roads, so far unnoticed. Oregon
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tomorrow, I think -- or at least the Columbia River -- then on down through the
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land of contrasts, the state of being, the place where most trends start and
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most wanderers stop. California will be like glue on our wheels, but there is
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so much more beyond... wherever that may be.
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-- Steve
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