Book Description
A road trip is an exploration of other lives, other places, and a change from the everyday, even when that everyday is an interesting life on the edge of Dartmoor. But sometimes other things call, tempting you away from the lovely silence of the night, a silence broken only by the flapping of the fire and the hooting of owls. And so it was we set off on a ‘driveabout’ to explore, meet people and see what we would see.
We ventured into Arlinda’s ‘hood’, another world indeed, with its shootings and drugs, and then the Badlands, which were very good, and we met our Apache friend Brother Bear, with whom we had a surprising amount in common.
Time expands. A few weeks become a whole experience of difference: the long road; the peaceful stops; the wonder of the Earth expressed in startling landscapes and bubbling blue springs; and history, the history and echo of the people who once lived here and called this place home. And the emptiness now, the great spaces with few people and hardly any cars, and cloud-smoking mountains — it’s another world.
And then cities, so different, with trumpet-playing waiters with multi-coloured dreadlocks and a ‘pirate’ with parrots feeding them chips. The railway north over the Medicine Line into Canada was leisurely, allowing an orgy of gazing and imagining the lives we passed, which we would never know.
I wrote a few notes as an aide-mémoire for myself and my lovely family, with whom I travelled, and it became this book.
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