Reflections on our natural resources

Livingston, Texas

2006-03-14T19:14:10Z

Livingston, Texas is a small town about a hundred miles north of Houston. The trees that flourish here are basically those that are draught-hardy. Also those that like an acid soil. Eastern red cedar, post oak, blackjack oak, loblolly pine, slash pine, long leaf pine (the three yellow pines) are the major forest trees. In the city, there are lots of redbud, magnolia, some palm, and, of course, dogwood. The dogwood is special to lots of folks. It's branches are thorny, the flower purest while, and a little red dot in the flower's center. Yes, it's been referred to often as the crown of thorns tree. But, it's pretty to all -- Christians, monotheists, atheists, Druids, and heathens. So, it's a good tree.
The city of Livingston, itself, is quite a place. It's a pretty even mixture of folks who have roots of some kind in Mexico, white, and African American. It's an economically healthy town with a broad mix of businesses -- retail, service, logging/lumber, tourist-related. I expected a kind of resentment because I'm from out-of-town, talk with a different accent, and live in what is basically a trailer park. But, no way! Folks here are eager to make contact, talk, and get to know you. It's a pretty comfortable life.
I remember something very significant regarding moves to places far away. In 1977, a faculty member at the University of Minnesota cautioned me as I began my first faculty appointment at Texas A&M: "Be careful down there. Folks are different between here and there." Well, after 17 years, I accepted a position back at the University of Minnesota. Wouldn't you know it, a fellow faculty member at Texas A&M said the same thing, in reverse: "Be careful. Folks up there can be different." Well, yes and no. Mostly, no. Even in the jungle in Nigeria, I found that the biggest difference was in the what you ate or drank as you sat around and chewed the fat with the folks you ran into. In the jungle, my newly found friend sucked on a seed as he and I talked. It was a powerful seed, and I just didn't want any part of it. But, the friend and I talked as he nursed his seed and I nursed my beer. Really, there isn't enough of a difference as you go from here to there . . .

Settling in, in Texas

2006-03-13T21:21:20Z

Steinbeck talks about the cohesiveness of Texas and Texans. Nothing could be truer. In other states, you get reminded from time to time that you are in that particular state. In Texas, there is no need for reminding -- you saw the Texas Star, a Texas flag, or some product that is labelled "Texas" product -- you saw one or more of these in the past ten seconds. Texas is the only state that entered the Union by treaty. It has reserved the right to form several states, or to just plain leave and form its own country. But, no problem, no chance -- Texans are fiercely patriotic to America. And, Texas kindness pervades all the cities, and pervades the nooks and crannies of all the country, the backroads, and the woodlands.

Retirement, aside from the obvious problem of the advanced age that accompanies it, is quite a delightful time. It seems 'just right' to begin it in a new place with a bunch of new people. We now call ourselves "fulltimers." That name, little understood outside our Escapees community, is really on the tip of the tongue of every person here. And, the city of Livingston accepts these northern outsiders, snowbirds, fulltimers quite readily. It's probably all about economics. At any rate, the fit is good. I did note with interest a psychological phenomenon the other day. I felt like the next steps after this one, in our lives (wife and mine) were pretty permanent. Just like when parents die, the children realize that they are the "next ones out," so too does retirement place a thought of a person's own "last stand" in his or hers.

Traveling from Minnesota to Texas

2006-03-10T22:10:06Z

"In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won't happen" -- Steinbeck, TWC

On Wednesday, March 1, Jinny and I hooked up our travel trailer and began the 1,500-mile trip from Crookston, MN to Livingston, TX. The hussle and the bustle of the months leading up to the beginning of the trip finally led to the trip, itself. A blizzard was supposed to have blown through, but missed Crookston. There was a wind blowing from East, loading the east side of the road with thin drifts, but we were on the west side. Travel was slow, but continuous -- more than just a little like life, itself (with luck). We made it all the way down to Yankton, NE, where we got a room across the street from an awfully good buffet. For the first week, I've yielded to the temptation to let everyone know what day it was of my retirement. That was day one. I'm actually past the impulse, now. Night two, we spent in Wichita, KS. It was a lot warmer.

We entered OK at the beginning of day three. I asked the woman at the rest stop where she would recommend camping. Wow, did she get it right. She led us to Lake Murray State Park 25 miles north of the southern OK state line. Concrete pads, full hookups, woods, a great restaurant -- and a lake. We stayed there three days. On the night before we left, we carried our quad chairs and wine down to the lake and watched the moon in the water.

The following night, we parked at a luxury resort north of Dallas and went out to dinner with friends.

The next day presented the worst of the driving -- smack through the Dallas freeway I35 - I30 - I45. It is absolutely impossible to choose the correct lane. Freeways intersect with one another. Lanes end. New lanes open up. Survival is a miracle.

Finally on day seven, we made it to Escapees RV camp in Livingston, TX, a place where folks like us stay a night, a week, a year, or the rest of their lives. But, if they happen to be staying the rest of their lives, they always keep their rig handy and ready, "just in case."

We've been in Escapees for three nights now. We now have a library card, a permanent address, and controlled climate storage for the 30 boxes we shipped USPS from Crookston to Livingston. What we don't have yet are (1) car license, (2) trailer license, and (3) drivers' licenses. It seems that the trailer and car need to be inspected before they get licensed. And, you have to have the car licensed before you can get a driver's license. So, we just went to WalMart -- what the heck.

Restaurants: Manny's Cajun, a Mexican restaurant just west of town, and Jerry's over in Onalaska. Never heard of "purple hulls," so of course ordered them.

The travel from Crookston to Livingston is now complete. The relocation was the first step in the adventure. So, we've made it happen -- at least the beginning.

Preparing for the expedition: the pre-adventure

2006-02-11T23:11:02Z

In Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, he needed to have an “event�? to precede his travels. It was a hurricane, a big storm where his very expensive yacht got tossed around and almost drowned. It was a “pre�? adventure. Our own pre-adventure wasn’t a natural disaster, but an event we brought upon ourselves – the MOVING SALE. We weren’t guarding any possessions that we were leaving behind. Rather, we were divesting of everything we wouldn’t really need in our lives of this expedition, except for a little bit of our collective sanity – an aliquot of sanity abandoned as we, two academics, engaged in the unfamiliar (to us) world of selling used stuff. Cameras and knickknacks were the first to go, followed closely by bookcases. The last to go, during the 9:00 to 2:00 pre-adventure was a chess set. Folks we knew and folks we didn’t know all came around to disassemble our material life. At the end, leftover were the art reproductions, some dishes, and my cowboy hat. Among the most remarkable purchases were my deer head, a food processor, and a Chinese carving with two words, the meaning of which now totally lost to me in my life.. Thoreau, in Walden, said that a person shouldn’t measure his or her wealth by how much in material possessions he or she owned, but rather how little it takes him or her to live on. Now, I finally know that I don’t really need a deer head. Just as Victorian writers most of the time spared the reader descriptions of indiscretions, I’ll spare the reader here of just how much money we made from our pre-adventure. Steinbeck’s yacht didn’t sink during the hurricane in his pre-adventure, and I’m still married.

Preparing for the expedition

2006-02-09T21:27:33Z

The hard part to beginning the expedition is actually removing yourself from your everyday, expected life and ... beginning. Other authors, greater and lesser, have documented their travels, and documented what they saw as meaningful about those travels. We can count Walden as one. Thoreau gives us quite an existential view of the world and, in the process, teaches us some biology and about life in America in 1850. Robert Louis Stevenson comes a bit later with "Travels with a Donkey." Steinbeck brings us to the 1960s in America with his "Travels with Charley," a great book in which he outfits a heavy-duty pickup to travel America. Much more recently, Larry McMurtry wrote about his trip along I-35 in "Roads: Driving America's Great Highways," giving us all insight into the characters he wrote about in his travels -- as they might relate to a trip down I-35 all the way from Duluth. Finally, William Least Heat-Moon gives us a colorful tour of the backroads with his photograph-filled book across America, "Blue Highways -- a Journey into America." There have been a lot of books that involved travel. Each has, to one extent or another, said a thing or two about America (in one way or another).

My trip begins in 2006 in Crookston, Minnesota, a town of 8,000 persons in Northwest Minnesota. It's a small, friendly town with a coordinate campus of the University of Minnesota. My wife and I are launching our expedition from this town on March 1, 2006. Well, I have to admit, the trip actually began eight years earlier. But, more of that later.