Sharon Bryan - San Diego, CA

Sharon Bryan's cat (the beautifully hirsute and husky Spencer) has an amazing trick. 30 minutes into the interview, I spotted Spencer in the middle of the living room, rising back on his haunches, reaching his front paws upward, stretching, a vertical and supplicant offering of some kind to the God of cats. He pedaled his front paws a couple of times and then settled back down. Sharon was in the middle of an answer to a question, but I never heard it, so amazed was I at the feline acrobatics. After Spencer was done, he turned around, gave me a once over and then settled back into a more normal horizontal pose on the carpet. I'll have to listen to the tape to see what Sharon had to say, but what I wouldn't give for a video of that trick.

I visited Sharon's bright San Diego apartment right at the semester end. A stack of graded essays rested on a barstool, and a higher stack - waiting for grades - waited nearby.

Sharon is a professional nomadic poet. She's been a visiting writer in a wide range of terrific places, Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Washington just to name a few. Born in Utah, educated in the northeast, and a lover of the Pacific Northwest - she calls Port Townsend, Washington, home - she's a restless soul.

Sharon has a love for anthropology and a keen desire to name and understand our role in the bigger picture, the planet, space, etc. It's equal parts science and spirituality, I think, lower case "S" on both. We talked a lot about the west, desert spaces. She told me about a superb visit to southern Utah and a prop plane tour of the geologic magic of the area.

We talked about some folks I've seen on the trip, good pals of hers. One of the great benefits of the project is passing along greetings from town to town, hearing funny stories about so-and-so back in the day, etc. And Sharon knows a lot of folks.

After I left, I regretted not following up on Sharon's time in Memphis. She talked about the shrine, Graceland. She's got a picture of Elvis in her place. I made a little cross as I passed it, hummed a little "Suspicious Minds" on the walk to the car, but if Spencer would have had me, I'd have stayed a little longer to talk about the King.

Ralph Angel - Pasadena, CA

After weeks in tranquil mountains and deserts, the arrival in Los Angeles is a little jarring. The whole "freeway nation" thing is not so hard to get used to. It's eleven lanes going every direction. Big deal. My wife has the lead foot. We have the handheld GPS unit. ("In 1.67 miles, honey, jam on the brakes and skitter across nine lanes to hit that exit. It's either Disneyland or ... you know what ... even if it's not Disneyland, too bad.") 

What's interesting about the everpresent freeways is the absolute necessity of knowing what they're called (number and name) when getting any kind of directions. Los Angelenos seem to delight in sending you on a pet path. It's impossible to get directions that don't involve you "hopping" on the 10 or the 5. Even to go to get milk, locals want to get you up on the Pomona Highway. They spend half their days looking at brake lights, and it brings them a bit of comfort to know that you will be stranded likewise.

No matter where you stand in LA or Orange County, you can see an on ramp looming in the distance. It's a little romantic, of course, to someone who loves to drive. People come here for Disneyland and Hollywood. I'm here for the feeders, the acceleration lanes, the deliciousness and precision of the lane change.

We're here to see Ralph Angel today, a terrific poet originally from Seattle, but now a long time resident of South Pasadena, a lovely neighborhood east of LA proper. As we drive through quiet streets, we spot a Rose Bowl float being constructed along Fair Oaks Avenue. We pull in and peer through a little opening, but Marty - a large man with a small man's shirt - asks us to move along. "Come back next weekend to get a look," he says. "They're going to show it then. Or you can wait till the TV."

Ralph's got a two story blue house from the 50s. Inside, he and I climb a gorgeous set of tile stairs to the main floor, but then go out the back, around, and down a slanted walkway that leads to his office. The office is 20 X 25. One wall contains a large bookshelf. He's got two large desks, one with a computer, one with pencils and legal pads. During our conversation Ralph talks about the "trance," a period that all writers seek in some way, a period of time when we are simply writing, channeling the information. We're making our little things, poems, stories. Art. Ralph says, "If you asked me my name, I wouldn't have an answer."

We go out in the back yard for some photos, and I make him preen and posture more than either he or I would like. What can I tell you. The camera has a lot of dials and whozits. He tells me a bit about the neighborhood, about the young men who built this fence, planted these trees. It's been fifteen years in this place.

Death Valley, CA

This project started in part because I believe that where we live and work has a tremendous effect on the way we live, the way we work, and the way we write. I was born and grew up in small towns all across Canada, but in my adulthood, I have lived in cities all across the U.S. - Phoenix, Dallas, D.C., Miami, etc. I romanticized this trip out of all proportion for several months before starting it, but I continue to be amazed at how gorgeous and varied the big country is. (And have reconfirmed a long held belief that "real" America is out here, not in NY, LA, etc.)

Because of weather and our initial schedule, we've mostly found ourselves in small towns, countryside, and extremely remote locations. The poets we've met with have lived in a variety of terrific places, many of them in absolutely stunning physical locations - on mountains, in tree-covered valleys, overlooking lakes, mountains, cow pastures, etc.

I had nobody to see in Death Valley, but with a very busy December in Southern California and Nevada looming, we decided to take a couple of days in this remote and beautiful National Park.

We arrived at Stovepipe Wells at mid day, the temperature a polite and friendly 65 degrees. Stovepipe Wells is a little outpost in the middle of the big valley. There is space for about 50 RVs in the National Park area - no electric or water. And there are 14 spots with power and water right alongside the desolate and barely traveled Highway 190. Because I'm a big stinking baby, I opted to pay the $12 to plug in - man, can my DirecTV dish pull in signals out here with nothing around us!

At night the place was dead silent. About every hour or so a car might headlight through, bypassing the tiny gas station - open 7 am - 7 pm, regular gas $2.65 a gallon - headed either to L.A. or Nevada. At night we sat out under the stars and a 2/3rd moon and just soaked in the quiet. The desert gives up its heat easily out here at night, and the lows were in the mid 30s. (And this particular spot is closed to travelers between April and October because average highs here in the summer top 120, and normal lows in July are 85-90 degrees.)

In the mornings we sat outside again in our coats and watched the sun poke up over the Funeral mountains and light the desert floor all over again.

The cares and worries of our old life, the working life, the city life, just were not a part of the equation. The question we had both asked before this - what would we do if we did not live in the city and work like dogs? - was no longer being asked. We wanted to live a different life. It wasn't just a vacation. It wasn't just a book. It was the breaking of one life and the opening of a new one.

The Continuing Dilemma Surrounding the Human Beings

Coming out of the Redwoods of northern California, we began to think of big stretches of highway. We're due in San Diego in a week, and we'd been poking around the gigantic red trunks long enough. (But, it must be said, the Redwoods are everything you'd imagine, gigantic beautiful trees that tower above the twisting Redwood Highway. But the size of the trunks is a little daunting. Some of the trees measure 25-30 feet in diameter, and many of the largest ones push up against the shoulder of the highway, some of them shorn with chainsaws to afford room for big dumb guys in motorhomes.)

So, after leaving the Redwoods we headed south and east and hooked up with US-99, one of the twin north-south highways that runs through the middle of California. (I-5 is the other.) We ended up in the Sacramento Valley, a long flat stretch full of pasture land and a variety of blank and similar mid-size cities and towns. (I'm sure that Merced and Fresno are more different than alike, but it would have to be proven to me.) US-99 is hard like washboard, more narrow than most interstates, and truckers raced alongside us, shaking our windows as they blurred by. Every thing that could rattle in the RV rattled. Stuff in the sink banged against each other. The VCR and DVD player above us bounced up and down like Iggy Pop after some espresso and a couple of diet pills.

After 100 miles of this we were dreaming of mountain roads again, twisting roads like US-101 in Oregon. At Fresno, we entered the San Joaquin Valley (south of the Sacramento, running from Fresno all the way to Bakersfield), and at a gas stop we pulled out the map and looked for the tiny gray roads that we hoped would take us off the interstate. We picked 180 to the east, up and toward the distant Sierra Nevada mountains.

We started at 240 feet above sea level, but quickly it was clear that we were going higher in a hurry. On the right were thousands of orange trees. They swept away from us into the rapidly deepening King's Canyon. On our left was scrub brush, some trees, rocky terrain. We passed a 1000 foot sign, quickly followed by 2000, 3000, 4000. Winnie was straining, and every mile or so we'd pull over into a scenic turnout to let cars go past. At 5000 feet I could smell the engine's running hot so we pulled over for lunch.

It was absolutely dead quiet. Occasionally a car would go by. But we stared out into the canyon, the gigantic 11,000+ foot peaks of the Sierra Nevada ahead of us. We had sandwiches and soup - a pretty frequent meal in the big rolling tin can. And we looked out the window and soaked in the quiet of the canyon. It was a jarring experience for us, just months ago locked - it seemed - into a different world.

Afterwards, we pushed Winnie up the last 500 feet or so, and started back, this time going down on the opposite wall of the canyon on Highway 245. The first sign we saw said "Winding Road, Next 31 miles. And it wasn't an exaggeration. The switchbacks were tight. I pushed it into 2nd gear, and I pulled the wheel hard left and right all the way down. It took 95 minutes to get down. We never popped over 30 mph except at the bottom, once we were back into the valley.

We stopped twice on the way down, once as the sun is dropping below the foothills. We stood on the side of the road, looked at some big cows a thousand feet below us, and not one car went by us in all those miles. We'd seen some houses, some ranches, horses, cows. (I think I heard a snake, but who knows?) But it was quiet and it was clear that this was one of the things we'd been looking for.

We both grew up in small towns, but since our late teens we've lived in cities. Listen, I love cities. I love the convenience, the energy, etc. I like to be able to get Ding Dongs at 11 pm. I like to pick one of 25 movies at the mall. But once I reached 40, all of that seemed less important.

Human beings. That's the rub.

I've lost patience with the "getting along with human beings" part of the contract. I have 3 friends and a wife. I have some family I can stand. I know my limits, my urges, my remarkable ability to disappointment all I meet. So why do I need to live someplace where I'm surrounded by thousands of new people who will only bring about sadness. (Not to mention the crushing ennui folks feel when they meet me. "Oh, you're an academic. Wow, is that the punch bowl over there?")

But the sun went down and we rode Winnie's brakes down to the valley again and joined the racing throngs on US-99.

We found a nice campground, backed the RV into the spot and stared out at 40 more motorhomes just like it. We were in a town whose name I've already forgotten. It was on a big sign when we pulled of the highway. It had a big street full of fast food joints. I spotted a nice Wal-Mart where I knew I'd have to go tomorrow to get a can of three-in-one oil. But all I was thinking about was the forest, that place, the canyon, trees, the sound of wind rushing somewhere. A billion stars.

Wherein the Author Takes Flight Over the California Coast

Thanksgiving 2003 - Wherein Winnie Cooper Comes Back to Us and the Journey Begins Afresh

Thanksgiving came one day early for us as the good folks in McMinnville called Wednesay afternoon to tell us that Winnie Cooper was good as new. In the pitch darkness, just before closing time, we hurtled into Valley RV to reclaim the newly repaired 29' rolling tin can that has been our home for the past two months - I mean, when I wasn't beating the hell out of it or running it into the overhangs of vacation homes.

We paid the bill and headed back to suburban Portland where we've been staying. It was nice to be in the warm confines of the RV. Sure, there's a musty smell. Sure, I'm a little gunshy about driving the thing, but it feels like normal again, and the big trip continues southward tomorrow morning.

We're headed to California where we have appointments to see David St. John, Carol Muske-Dukes, Sharon Bryan, and a handful of others. (We'll also be shooting across to Nevada to see Donald Revell and Claudia Keelan.)

Anyway, it's Thanksgiving here as I write this, and we're spending our last night in a hotel before getting on the road in the morning. We are 2 of about 6 guests in the entire hotel. We get a complimentary continental breakfast each morning, and today we sat by ourselves and ate a dozen hard boiled eggs, our voices echoing through the empty building.

Later today, instead of having our normal Thanksgiving in Arkansas with my wife's folks - which is always a gigantic and delicious feast - we'll be here at the hotel microvaing Swanson "Hungry Man" Turkey Dinners. They look terrific. Really. White turkey meat. Peas. Potatoes. Monosodium Glutamate. Food coloring. And hardly any cleanup! No pie. But I did grab 2 Snickers bars out of the vending machine. And for drinks I've got three cans of Coors Light chilling.

What a lot to be thankful for right here.

But the highway calls and we will be swerving on it soon.

Floyd Skloot - Amity, OR

While Winnie Cooper waits in a heated bay at a large RV shop in McMinnville, Oregon, I take our rental car south to Amity, Oregon, to see Floyd Skloot. 

Floyd and his wife live in a pretty round home on 20 acres, due east of Amity, a tiny burg with one gas station and one feed store.

I twist and turn up a hilly road through farm and ranchland (and vineyards), and turn down Skloot's driveway. Heavy stands of trees crowd in, providing a lovely green canopy as I travel the 1/5 of a mile to the house. I stand and stare into a long, beautiful valley that sweeps away from me. I spot Floyd through one of the large windows and I head inside.

Floyd Skloot and I talk on the first floor of the house in a lovely small office with a window that opens into a heavily wooded area. Often during the conversation Floyd points outside at the view. He's not pointing to a scene in particular; he's simply referencing what is apparent: this place is beautiful. It's a peaceful place, dead quiet, and richly arrayed by nature.

In 1988, Skloot entered a terrifying and confusing new world after a virus created permanent brain damage. He reclaimed the ability to read, speak, and write, and now lives with the damage, helping himself by noting things on slips of paper that he knows his damaged brain might lose the next day. (The remarkable story of his illness is in the award winning memoir, In the Shadow of Memory.)

But during my visit, Skloot is charming, funny, insightful, and he energetically talks about his work. He grew up in Brooklyn and then on a barrier island near Long Island, NY. His early poetry is full of those images, as his most recent work full of his adopted home of Oregon.

His illness limits the hours he can work effectively. So the work comes out more slowly. But it matches the pace of the life here. He motions out the window again. He knows he's distant from the publishing and academic worlds, but he learned years ago that it didn't matter. As a younger man he was a long distance runner, covering 50 miles a week on his own through dense parks. He's always gone on his own paths at his own pace. He travels distances now, too, in his work, back through the maze of his chaos-wracked memory. But he wrings what he finds into fine and beautiful language.

After we're done chatting, we shoot some photos upstairs while we visit with Skloot's wife. She's shot all of the author photos for his books and while I take my turn to aim and fire, Skloot tells me that when he looks at the old photos he can watch himself age. His beard is brown in the earliest photo; it gets more and more gray as time goes by. When I'm done, putting my cameras away, I look up for one last view out the window, and I catch a moment not intended for me. Floyd smiles warmly at his wife, and she back. If you're going to grow old, this is a good place for it to happen.

We say our goodbyes and I go out to my car alone, past two sweet cats. I shoot a couple of shots and get into the car.

The Day I Did Winnie Cooper Wrong

The crunch was pretty loud. Oh, I didn’t know what it was, but I knew something pretty bad had happened. It was a crunch that sounded thick and noisy. I looked at my wife and asked her if she had any ideas. I thought maybe a small deck chair we hadn’t stowed properly. Maybe a small badger. Maybe fifty tin cans.

We had just finished packing Winnie Cooper full after a lovely week on the Oregon coast. We had appointments to make, but we had many hours. There was no rush. I had put the new Dido CD in the player, took my coat off. I started the wipers on the big tin can. The rain was coming down sideways, the wind coming in, too, 30-40 mph. But the view was clear. We had finished cleaning the house we had rented, put the keys back in the lockbox, and we were headed out of the driveway. Until the crunch.

When I got out and got around the side, I saw the problem. A three inch piece of the house had pierced the roof of the RV. We had chunked up against the house’s eave, a 2X6’ board under the gutter had been torn off, about a 9” chunk laying on the driveway.

The house looked okay. I was grateful I didn’t tear the metal gutters down. It would be an easy repair. A shitty break, but not the end of the world.

On the other hand, as I struggled to pull my gigantic ass up Winnie’s ladder, I kept thinking: “Please, God, I know I’m a sinner, a dirty dog sinner. I know I’m doomed. But this time, this one time, please don’t let there be a tear in the fiberglass.”

And of course, there was one. 24” or so. I could see inside the coach from the top, down to the Styrofoam insulation – I’m not making it up – down to the drop ceiling in the bedroom closet. And the rain kept on. The wind howled. I stood there on the ladder, 9 terrifying feet above earth, and wished with all of my strength for a pistol so I could blow my aching brains out.

But I trudged down. My wife and I left a contrite note for the house owner, and got rolling.

When you have a hole in your roof, and when you don’t really know where you are, it makes sense to drive just about any direction. They’re all the same. The storm was swamping the entire coast for a hundred miles north and south. We just started north on US-101. My wife started looking at the big RV guide, looking for something, maybe a big ad that said: “Are you in Oregon? Are you a dumbass? Do you need a place to park where the rain won’t ruin all of your belongings? Call 1-800-SHATTERED-DREAMS.”

20 miles later and we pulled over at Newport. We found a large tin building with a gigantic For Lease sign, and we parked tight on one side, letting most of the wind and the rain shoot over top.

It was the first break we had taken since the crunch. My wife – bless her – hadn’t said a cross word. She knows me. She knows that the self-loathing was deep. She knew that I was beating myself up in exquisite ways, interesting ways, varied ways, ways that could not compare. We worked on the phone, looking for a repair place. We don’t carry every yellow page for every small town in Oregon, so we kept burning the cell phone at $2 a call for information.

Finally, we located a place, 90 miles north. It was Sunday. Noon. In this part of the state everything is closed on Sundays. The streets roll up. The gas stations close at 7 pm.

The phone rang and was answered at Valley RV in McMinnville, Oregon. The guy had the same name as me. He understood. He felt bad for me. He didn’t judge me. I loved him.

He told us to come his way. Their service bays were closed till the next morning, but, by God, they had a big awning and I could park there if I wanted.

The sun parted the clouds in my foggy soul. The rain kept up, but now the wind was behind us. My wife went back to closet every once in a while, and yes, what a surprise, the ceiling was getting wetter. The water kept coming in. Things were getting soaked. The wood was getting saturated. The RV was losing resale value as fast as I normally make my way through a big bowl of pudding.

But we got there. We pulled Winnie out of the storm. The nice man inside gave me the yellow pages and we found a cab to take us to a Best Western, where we later made plans to have the good folks at Pizza Hut bring us large, meaty pies, which are now gone.

There’s a TV movie on. I’m showered, clean. My wife has brought me a beer. I look out at the blinking signs outside my window and I see a place where later – in several hours – I will go to breakfast. I will show these Oregonians who’s boss when it comes to biscuits and gravy.

And maybe, just maybe. The phone will ring. Winnie Cooper will be fixed. It will cost us more money than is reasonable. It will cost what it normally would to send a kid to a large state college for a year. But Winnie will be whole. We will load up again. Smarter. Better. Duller in spirit, but shiny yet, despite it all. And we will roll toward California.

Wing Sing

If you're ever blind and lost on the tiny winding highways of central Oregon, watch for an unlikely town called Philomath, and an unlikely restaurant called Wing Sing.

Wing Sing has both kinds of food, Chinese and American, and both kinds of music on the jukebox, Country and Western.

My wife and I were exploring off the coast during our delightful stay in Waldport, and got mad lost on highway 34. I kept imagining it would "hook back" to the water. My wife knew I had taken us down the rabbit hole. I kept saying, "It's going to hook back right after this corner." And then there'd be another view of this pretty stream, more towering trees, denser fog, another pickup truck with a rifle, etc.

Anyway, after about an hour of praying for a hook back, we roared into Philomath. Philomath looked to me, like heaven. It was a town with a highway that went west again. I saw a sign that said we were - impossibly - 100 miles from where we had started. I know we hadn't come that far, but I wasn't going back on Hwy. 34, it of the suddenly winding curves, the nervous and tiny shoulder.

But before I committed to the larger Hwy. 20 and its unknown pleasures, I thought we should get something to eat. We looked up and down the main drag and saw only two lit signs, one that said "TAV RN," and one that said "Wing Sing's." You know, of course, that no place has a finer reputation for Chinese food than central Oregon, so that's where we went.

There are two rooms at Wing Sing, a bar attached to the north side of the building, and the restaurant to the south. a little walkway attaches the two rooms together. Over in the bar there were three people, a woman behind the bar, an old guy at a booth, and the old guy's daughter, Sherry, playing video poker while her dad waited for their food. It was Sherry's birthday. Our waitress told us.

My wife and I sat in the restaurant alone and ordered chow mein and sweet and sour chicken. I was still fretting, still thinking about the hook back, wondering what kind of meat the chicken would be, but my wife was into the new adventure. We waited about 8 minutes and two gigantic plates arrived. The food smelled delicious and we dug in.

Twenty minutes later we pushed back from the table, still the only one occupied. I gave my money to Darnelle, gave her an extra $5 to buy the birthday girl a drink, and we went back into the pitch blackness, aiming at Highway 20, delighted to see what and how it would get us back to from where we'd come.

Pause

There's a soda company I've stumbled across out here called Jones Soda. At a tiny groceteria somewhere in central Oregon, we bought four bottles, two of "M.F. Grape Soda," and two of "Fufu Raspberry." They're in glass bottles. They're fizzy and delicious, and full of bubbly satisfaction. (I get too much pleasure from stuff like this, I know.)

The company has recently expanded into the hot hot hot energy drink world with two offerings: Big Jones Energy Soda and Whoopass Energy Shots. If I could, I'd buy into the company. They rotate different black and white photos on the labels of their sodas, and they've got feel-good propaganda on their bottles and on their website. If I had any cajones at all, I'd be this brave. Maybe if I drank some Whoopass I'd get out of the academic world and start making soda (or cheese, or chocolate) and be a nutty corporate wonk of the flaky variety; I'd wear ribbons and sandals and really let the big belly go.

But alas.

The book project is on hiatus for 8 wonderful days. We've rented a lovely house in Waldport, Oregon in order to give us a chance to save up some strength for coming months. I started this project more than 2 months ago, but my wife and I have been rolling in Winnie Cooper for exactly 1 month. 25 poets so far. 3500 miles in September. 4000+ in October. Gasoline? Hamburgers? Ice cream sandwiches? I don't even want to count those things. The shock and dismay would cripple my already withered spirit. But really, would God have made so many varieties of the ice cream sandwich if he didn't want me to try them all?

To my pals who are in email contact with me, I do complain a lot about the travel and the relative discomfort of living in the big rolling tin can. But here's a picture of our view today while we had soup and sandwiches for lunch:

So, the trip has a wondrous upside.

Not least of which is the unending string of interesting poets, all who welcome us - albeit briefly - into their lives and work. I continue to be appreciative of their help as the book continues its growth.

This week I sent out some proposals to some university presses. I hope to get an editor interested in the project, and I think we're at a good point to do that. The project is taking shape on this website, but the real meat, the interviews, are still on my computer, still on tape, still getting transcribed. Their addition to the website blurbs will really bring the themes of the book together. There's some real poetry in the interviews.

Barbara Drake - Yamhill, OR

Barbara Drake lives amidst the rolling foothills of far western Oregon, surrounded by vineyards and nut farms...no, really...nut farms: hazlenuts, walnuts, chestnuts.

Her pretty - and self-described "funky" - farm is crowded with sheep, chicken, one big rooster, and Guy, a large and happy Border Collie.

She and I walk through the farmhouse and I am buffeted by the smell of scones and hot coffee. She shows me the floors and ceilings that her husband Bill did himself. "They're soft wood," Barbara tells me. "The dog marks them up." They look terrific to me.

We sit in her sun room as the Saturday morning light floods in there.

We talk about her recent chapbook, a gorgeous limited edition offering full of earthy poetry, all of it rooted in place and the natural world. Barbara tells me about an old guy who showed up at the farm one day, a guy who had lived on this land almost 80 years ago. He remembered it as the place where he was happiest. They struck up some correspondence and he sent her a photo of the place from the 20s that showed some of the same trees that are there today. Barbara likes living here a lot, and a lot of that has to do because she knows the history, feels the history of the place. She knows that the spirit of the place is something that existed before her, and she hopes it continues long after.

We struggled to get Winnie Cooper up the dirt road to Barbara's place, and going down is the same. We knock a few limbs down as we go, but - as always - hope we leave the places as we find them.

Mark Halperin - Ellensburg, WA

Mark Halperin is a delightful guy who greets me in his snowy front yard. He and Dasha, his sweet half-Husky, half Malamute - who understands commands in English, Russian, and "dog" - escort me to the warmest room in the long and lovely house, Mark's study.

Dasha makes herself scarce and Mark and I talk on a sunny but chilly morning.

We talk about the standard items from this project, but also get around to Mark's love of fishing. He's a serious fisherman, a fly fisherman, who can see the edge of his beloved Yakima River from any of a number of windows on the south side of the house. When fishing doesn't take up his time - and he fishes in lieu of writing all summer - he can reach over and pick up one of his treasured banjos or acoustic guitars. He has a Gibson acoustic, an L series from 1913. He picks it up at one point and finger picks a sort of Leadbelly-style country-blues.

Mark has taught and worked in Russia a number of times, and we talk a bit about how those experiences have been crucial to his own translations of contemporary Russian literature. But he spends more time telling me about life in Russia, how the elevators work, about a theater he frequents.

He's a great interview. He listens to a questions, recognizes the answer I'm probably looking for (much to my chagrin), then spins his answer a couple of ways. He says he doesn't mean to be contrary, but it lights him up to do it. He is animated and fun to listen to. We fill one side of a tape and I pop another in and keep going.

After a while, we go out into the back yard to see another of his writing areas, this one in 1/2 of a finished shed in the back yard. I meet his wife, Bobbie Halperin, a painter. Bobbie has spotted my wife sitting in our rented car in the driveway - putting stamps on envelopes and other mindless chores - and has brought her in to see her studio. So the four of us, and Dasha - she of the serious language skills - stand around a bit and chat like we're all pals. Which is what we've become.

Jana Harris - Sultan, WA

It's election day in Sultan, Washington, and one of the candidates, a tall and gaunt man with a long beard, is standing in the back of his pickup truck at a local gas station, hollering at passers by. He's running for city council. He has my vote, just for the beard and the courage of his convictions - whatever they may be. We get some gas at the station and I listen in a bit. He's talking taxes, and freedom, and about keeping government out of the "business of the little man." Some cars move right past him like he wasn't there. But others stop for a second on the shoulder and open their windows. Some folks honk. He waves at everyone. He seems to know about every third person, calling them by name. 

As we have traveled out of the urban cities on the Washington coast, we've found the towns a little tougher, a little more wild. People are more independent here, especially when compared to the reserved folks we know from our time in the northeast U.S. Hippies and rednecks live happily next to ranchers, methamphetamine entrepeneurs, and the ever-present militia folks in their cammo outfits. Loggers and fruit growers.

We wind through some narrow roads east of Sultan and up into some pretty ranchland. Mountains rise in the eastern sky, and we drive between orchards and pastures until we get to Jana Harris's farm on a spacious and quiet piece of land, a barn, a long house, and a pond to the north.

Jana Harris lives on a working horse farm, and before se see the house, we see four beautiful mares in separate pens on a clear and sunny chilly late morning in November.

Jana welcomes us into the house, as does Charlie, a sweet old lab, and Hillary Clinton, a cat with a - reported at least - running line of cat chatter.

Jana is whipping up some food in the kitchen. She talks about her land and horses while she cooks, and we drink in the smells and play with Charlie - who loves the sun coming through onto the dark floor tiles.

We eat and talk about Jana's work. Jana's most recent books give voice to pioneer women and children who lived in Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington. Jana does brilliant research, unearthing photos and stories and turning this raw material into gorgeous narrative poems that let these heroic - but often lost - characters live fresh lives on the page.

After a feast, we see Jana's writing area, atop an old black leather padded bar from the previous owners of the house. She writes and sleeps in a gigantic open room on the second floor, with large windows open to the southern view of her pastures and the mountain range.

We go with Jana outside as she brings the horses in from the fields for some hay and carrots. The horses are gigantic - I am a city boy, of course - but Jana hooks them and hauls them in easily, all the time talking to them, catching them up on these new visitors who are suddenly in their barn.

We go in for dessert and talk a little about her teaching, some of the schools she's worked at, and it's time to go. We take our leave - and two apples.

Sam Hamill - Port Townsend, WA

We leave Everett, WA, at 6 am in a rented Ford Focus. We're headed for the first of two ferry rides that will take us to Port Townsend where I'm scheduled to meet with Sam Hamill, a terrific poet, translator, and editor of Copper Canyon Press. (Winnie Cooper is hooked up in a nice but crowded RV park, warding off - we hope - all time low temperatures for the area.)

The ferry rides are spectacular. On the first one, a 30 minute ride from the mainland to the southern tip of Whidbey Island, the sun rises behind us as we disappear into the frosty sub-freezing fog that obscures the island from us. Once on Whidbey we drive the small two-lane until we hit a diner. The sidewalks are dotted with kids headed to school, all of them bundled up in layers, not a serious winter coat anywhere.

I have trouble with the ketchup bottle and drown the poor hash browns, but otherwise the food is warm and wonderful.

The next ferry takes us off Whidbey Island, through a small strait, right to the attractively-arrayed town of Port Townsend. Even from a distance, I can see pretty white houses and buildings scattered over the hills. It's almost enough to make you miss the towering range of Olympic Mountains behind the town.

Once in Port Townsend, we do some banking, check a few antique stores out and then my wife drops me at the white clapboard building that is Copper Canyon.

Sam greets me and we get down to business quickly. On the wall facing him is a monumental stack of books published by his esteemed press over the past 30 years. It's a little daunting. I spot on the spines some of the names of poets I've already seen on the trip.

It's probably not necessary to mention it, because it's mostly well known in the poetry community, but Sam's world has been buzzing this past year. In January he was invited to the White House to take part in a symposium on American poety sponsored by Laura Bush. But when the war in Iraq began, Sam organized Poets Against the War instead, a 21st century version of the earlier Vietnam-era model. Many of the most important and influential poets in the country got involved in a wide range of readings and publications. The project would tax anyone, but as Sam correctly notes, it's generated some of the most important public discussion in decades.

But we're here today to discuss other things.

Sam answers everything directly without hesitation. He's sure of himself. It's a sort of confidence, I think, that comes with his comfort level. He's lived in Port Towsend for 30+ years; he's run the press for the same amount of time. He's a grown up.

After we chat, we shoot some photos in the building, some in his office and some in an airy room that contains - what I imagine is - Copper Canyon's original press. In the photos, Sam looks right at the camera. In other situations, the interviewee sometimes wants to know what to do. What should I look at? Is this okay? Should I sit? Sam just knows. He looks right at me, his eyes open, clear, and I shoot fast; Sam Hamill is a guy who's got a full day ahead. The day doesn't stand a chance.

After fish and chips at the Dry Star Cafe, we head south out of Port Townsend. We curl around a series of highways until we end up in Bainbridge Island, a little burg that sits aside one of many ferries back to Seattle.

Christopher Howell - Spokane, WA

Christopher Howell is a quiet man with a studied nature, and my visit to his lovely home in Spokane is pleasant and much too short.

We walk through his kitchen and into his office that looks over his back yard. The room is small, but well lit and we sit across a heavy wooden desk to talk while drinking coffee. As I do in all of these interviews, I start with the principal question: "Does place impact your work?" Howell answers that in complete and precise sentences. He works the phrases slowly, but they are elegant and well wrought.

I move through some other questions, and I can tell instantly whether or not they're good questions. Howell's face tells me instantly. A good question elicits a solid nod, an intake of breath, and the beginning of an answer. A question not quite as good brings a wrinkled brow. Howell can take an okay question and draw from it an angle that's interesting and far more in line with what I really wanted.

He's so good, in fact, that I try a new question, one I've not tried out on any poet yet. It sounds garbled as I sell it, but Howell sees an area of light in it. He gives me an answer I'll be able to simply type into the book. No edits. Sentences with punctuation. Terrific.

We finish chatting as the tape recorder clicks off. It's a sign.

The light has gone down quickly outside. It's only 5 pm, but it looks like 8 or 9 anywhere else. We go out into the bricked patio area off the back door of his house and we shoot some photos. We talk a bit about a new book of his coming out. He walks me through the house, out into the front yard to look for my wife. I see the lights of Winnie Cooper (the new name for the big beast) and wave back at Howell through the window.

Nance van Winckel - Liberty Lake, WA

Nance van Winckel lives outside of Spokane, Washington, in an airy and beautifully apointed 2nd floor condo that looks over Liberty Lake, a small, but gorgeous body of water surrounded by trees.

She shows me her writing studio first. The large high-ceiling room faces the lake, and is lit by a floor to ceiling window nearly 5 feet across. She tells me she has plans to add another window in the same room, and I picture the room with one entire wall of windows. It will be spectacular.

We go out to the living room and Nance sits on the couch and I face her in a rocking chair. We cover some general questions first, then begin to discuss some new things for me. Because van Winckel is also an accomplished fiction writer, my questions about place generate some new angles. We talk about how important setting is to fiction, how much more dense the physical world appears in a short story versus a poem.

When I question her about specific work, she recalls a trip to eastern Europe in the mid 80s, a time when the Berlin Wall and Communism still stood. Her visit generated nothing more than a few notes, but more than a dozen years later the physical landscape of her visit found its way into a series of poems she was writing that eventually became the much-honored collection Besides Ourselves. Van Winckel figures it took a dozen years for that rich and complex place to work its way into her subconscious, until the sights and sounds were as second nature for her as any that existed in her from her childhood or coming of age.

We shoot some photos after we finish chatting, some on the porch overlooking the lake. We wander out front of her place and shoot a few more.

As always, the visit is over too fast. I'm keeping to a schedule, of course, and the journey has really only just begun. We say our goodbyes.

Robert Wrigley - Moscow, ID

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a 29' motorhome to go up a dirt road near the Idaho border. Yet, this is what we did today. The accomplishment of that was so thrilling - the dust, the bumps, trees and branches slashing at us - that when we got to the home of the poet Robert Wrigley, I locked the keys in the big tin can for fun. Oh, how we will laugh, I thought. In an hour or so I'll be finished with the interview. And to really make my visit memorable, I'll force the poet to endure an extra hour of Beth and me standing and waiting for a locksmith to arrive from Godknowswhere, Idaho. We're making memories, after all. What fun would it be if I just showed up and went away when I was done? Where's the gimmick in that? Instead, I'm thinking of ways to make sure all the poets on the trip get a story or two to tell. I can't always lock my keys inside like today, so some days I might spill an entire Pepsi onto the carpet, or release a baggie full of wasps that I smuggle in. Maybe at the end of the trip I'll just burn someone's house down. Stay tuned.

Robert Wrigley lives four miles outside of Moscow, Idaho, a rugged college town near the Washington border. Our newly named rolling tin can (Winnie Cooper) squeezes up a combination of gravel and dirt roads, through severe switchbacks to the top of a towering hill that looks south and back toward town. The view is extraordinary, three mountain ranges, one more than 100 miles away on the horizon. On a clear day you can see all the way to Oregon.

Wrigley greets us and shows us his studio, a 12 X 15 building he built himself. Inside it's full of books, pictures, and a gleaming white Fender Stratocaster that Wrigley won in a raffle. Wrigley played as a kid around St. Louis, but now just uses the guitar to help delay the inevitable work that awaits him at his desk, where his hard backed journal and mechanical pencil await.

Robert and I sit in the studio, and while I'm setting up a camera, he shows me a 1934 Webster's unabridged dictionary. It's on a wooden stand covered with a small towel. It's a prized possession. He points out that the book, being so old, is missing a lot of words in use normally now, and it's an idea that surprises me, but that seems to really please him.

He sits in a high backed office chair and I'm on the couch/futon and we talk easily. It's not hard to see how the natural world that populates Wrigley's work ended up there; we're in the midst of a mountain forest that teems with animal and plant life. He tells me about moose, coyotes, owls, snakes, and bear.

After we finish chatting, we go out of the studio to discover my wife sitting by the Winnebago, locked up nice and safe, the keys resting politely and disarmingly on the dash.

Wrigley takes us into the main house and we take turns calling locksmiths until we find one open on this sunny Saturday.

For 30 minutes we play with Opal, the 4 year old Australian Shepherd who is happy to see us. I silently fume at myself as we wait, but my wife is relaxed and Robert is a perfect host. He shows us some photos of another house he says has a better view than this one - though I can't imagine such a thing exists. He shows me another photo of a mutual friend.

When the locksmith arrives, we go down to greet the guy and his wife who apparently travels with him on his weekend calls. The locksmith tells me it'll be $20 and then inserts a small wedge into the space between the window and lower window jamb on the passenger side.

Then he pulls out an 18 inch "slim jim" and begins wriggling it in the opening till the lock pops. He reaches in, unlocks the other side and we're about ready to go. I'm pulling out $20 when I hear a gurgling. The locksmith's wife hears it too and looks at me. It sounds like hot water on metal, which of course it is. The locksmith's truck's radiator has had enough and is giving up its water and coolant like an open faucet on July 4th. I stand back, a little alarmed - such is my bravery - but the locksmith goes right up to the boiling radiator and gingerly loosens the cap. Once it's off, he goes back to the back of his truck, gets some more coolant, and begins feeding it in the radiator.

I think to myself that things couldn't get any better. I've been stuck in Robert Wrigley's driveway for an hour, and now my new friend is stuck too, and he's right behind me. We're here forever. I wonder if Robert has guest rooms for all of us. Maybe I'll just move in. I hope that the next poor sap who wants to interview Wrigley lets a few months pass. This shan't be forgotten.

I fetch a gallon of water from underneath Winnie Cooper and give it to the locksmith. The combination of a little time, the coolant, and some nice drinking water has calmed the locksmith's truck. He backs out and leaves us to say goodbye to Robert.

My wife and I shake Robert's hand. I apologize some more, just for good measure, and then we slowly back out of the long driveway. (This is the only way to get out; there is no turning around the big beast on this narrow and rocky path.) I lurch backwards, pushing one time toward the edge of a cliff which would kill me - but me alone - and then toward the rocky side, which would likely only scrape up the Winnebago, but probably crush my wife. My self-loathing - and you must know that I make Richard Nixon look like Anthony Robbins - is raging. But we get out of the driveway; my wife joins me. Gives me a shrug that lets me know that "Shit happens," and we angle slowly down Wrigley's mountain, aiming toward a road made of cement, running north, and headed to Spokane.

Highway 12

Highway 12 runs between Lolo, MT, in the westernmost part of the state, straight through the panhandle of Idaho, and into eastern Washington State. And we take that route today, leaving Montana around noon, and crossing the Snake River into Washington around 5. It's 200 miles, roughly, and the first 150 or so are the most beautiful miles I've ever driven.

Highway 12 follows the Lochsa River, a trickle for the most part this year, but at one time, a rager big enough to carve out its own bed and the path that Highway 12 follows.

For the first 150 miles, the highway is crowded on the left by the river, and on the right by quickly rising walls of rock and evergreen trees. A sign early on says, "Winding Road, 77 Miles." And it's not a joke. The road meanders through slow left and right turns for its entire distance. Cars run around 55-60 mph for the most part, but the big rolling tin can settles in around 45. And that's fast enough, because each turn brings another gorgeous tableau of water, rock, road, trees, and mountains.

We pull over at one of the scores of turnouts and make sandwiches. We stare out the window at the river going past.

We continue on, bending, releasing out of the corners, accelerating on the short straight stretches, eyes always cocked up, checking out the mountains that peer down on us. The cell phones are both out, otherwise we'd be calling everyone we know. So, how are things where you are?

By the time we hit the small town of Orofino, the landscape has changed. The mountains are hills now. We've left the last of the Rockies behind, for the most part, the towering Bitterroots - the mountains that most vexed Lewis and Clark - the last range for us to blast through at 8 miles per gallon. We stop in Orofino for groceries for the next couple of days. My wife gets a pumpkin, not quite as big as my head, but you get the idea.

We're in the Pacific time zone now. The sun is setting already at 5 pm. Highway 12 still bumps around in my brain as I exit onto 5th Street in Clarkston, Washington. We pull in at a campground that overlooks the Snake River and Granite Lake. By the time the sun has gone down, we're into our second bowl of chili.

Tomorrow is a work day, transcription day. The tapes are piling up. Then back on the road. Moscow, Idaho. Spokane and Liberty Lake, Washington. Four more days, three more interviews and the October leg will be over.

Sandra Alcosser - Lolo, MT

At 10 am, Sandra Alcosser pulls up beside our motorhome. We've parked at a small park and ride on a highway south of Missoula, MT, and about 5 miles from Sandra's home in the mountains between Florence and Lolo, Montana. She greets us both warmly and we pack our stuff into her wagon.

We head up a gravel road, then a dirt road, and then squeeze halfway between the trees and the ditch to let a neighbor go by. "That's Harve," Sandra says, waving at her neighbor's pickup truck. We press on up the dirt road. There are only 6 houses on this stretch, and Sandra's is at the end.

We turn into the tiny driveway and see her new dog, the lively Rio. Rio is glad to have the company, and despite my love of dogs, I ignore him for a bit and look around at the place. To the south, the land and the trees slope away, back down to where we started. Behind us, the mountains climb, but not so far. We're a long way up. Pine trees pop up everywhere. The sky is a collection of colors, dark clouds to the north and west, but above us blue, and the sun coming through and warming up the ground around the cabin.

We all go in, and it's gorgeous. The wood is warm, the furniture heavy and old - some of it from an old drugstore in Missoula. Sandra uses some of the furniture to hold books, but one piece is still mostly empty, waiting to be filled. They once held a collection of amber bottles of strychnine and belladonna, and I'm voting for their display instead!

Sandra sets us around her table with cookies, fruit, coffee, and delicious and cold blueberry-banana smoothies.

This is the first of the interviews that my wife has seen in person. I traveled in September by myself, and since we've been on the October leg, it's always been more convenient for her to drop me off and pick me up. I'm glad she's here today, because I know she loves this part of this country, and I'd want to show her this beautiful cabin anyway, but it feels odd. We're on this journey around the country together, but this book is my thing. My wife supports it, listens to me bitch about the work. She looks over the photos and gives me her advice, but she's never seen me teach, and I've never gone to watch her at work. Our work selves have always had their own space, and suddenly she's watching me and it's disorienting. What must she think of this talk of poems and place? How many times have my eyes glassed over at one of her work functions when she and her colleagues talked about advertising, network TV sales? At how many English department parties have we exchanged comical glances when I'd be locked in a life or death discussion about Ginsberg or Stevens while my wife would be motioning like she was starting the car and driving us home? We know couples who work together, who have the same work pals. But that's not us. When we're not working, we like to check RIGHT out. There's no chance a spontaneous chat about the all-important 18-49 demographic is going to come up, nor are we likely to discuss whether or not we think Robert Frost could be excised painlessly from the canon. We talk about dinner. Movies. The last Grisham. Our pals, families. It's not better or worse, it's just us.

Sandra feels strongly about place, the energy of New York versus Montana or San Diego (where she still runs the poetry program at San Diego State, a program she started). She's passionate about her work and about poetry in general. Over the years she's logged tens of thousands of miles working for the NEA, teaching drug addicts, running the Poets in the Park program in New York City, teaching and reading around the country.

She talks easily about her work and her role in its creation. I pose some sticky questions that have come up in my earlier interviews, and Sandra thinks about each question and answers them assuredly, deftly, with force and clarity.

It's all over too quickly. The three of us leave the cocoon of the cabin, and into the startling sunlight. Rio joins us, his puppy-ness overflowing. We hike up a small path behind Sandra's house, a path that literally could take us all through the rest of Montana and into Idaho. We shoot some shots of Sandra - and one of her with Rio - and head back down. We drive down the mountain, talking about Ireland, a place my wife and I visited this summer and a place Sandra is going later this year.

When we get back to the motorhome, Sandra hugs us both. We load my gear into the Winnebago and Sandra's wagon disappears away from us, onto the gravel road, and back up into the mountain.

The West: Some Thoughts

I’ve often told people in the East that I thought of myself as a Westerner. I love the West, I’d say. I’d tell them about going to college in Arizona, my love of the Oregon coast, and some story about smoking a cigar on a car hood in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

I never had to say much more than that. That was always strange enough for most people. In the circles I’ve lived in for many years now, the West is just some blank spots on the left side of the map. My pals in Maryland could no more pick Montana out on a map than I can drive past a Taco Bell without stopping in for a taste.

In the past week, we’ve been moving around in western South Dakota, Wyoming, and now Montana. Big empty states. Beautiful empty highways that are always snaking through badlands or hills, pastures, wheat fields, and then mountains. Twenty-four black Angus cows, steers, whatever, all lined up by a lone tree. Actual cowboys moving a herd of cattle down the side of the highway outside Aladdin, Wyoming, population 15. Endless and stoic power lines disappearing into the horizon in Crawford county.

As we left the badlands and high prairie grasslands of South Dakota, we started to get into hills through eastern Wyoming, and by the time we got to Buffalo, in the north central part of the state, we could see parts of the Rocky Mountains looming ahead of us.

From Buffalo to Butte, Montana, we climbed from 3000 feet to nearly 6500. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to encourage a 29 foot motorhome up to 6500 feet. It’s a lot like getting me out of a hammock. But we eased off the gas, hugged the right hand lane with some semis and moving vans, and ended up crossing the Continental Divide at a brisk 40 mph.

And every mile over the past few days has been stunning. The land out here just eats you up. In South Dakota, it’s the horizon that kills you. It’s everywhere. You look any direction and see the earth moving away from you. But now in Montana, there are hills and mountains on every side, the highest of them snowcapped, despite the fact that we’re in our third or fourth 70+ degree day in late October, breaking records all over.

We spent the day in Missoula, a pretty western college town with art galleries, ranchers, college students, artisans, and hippies. We spent some time at a Kinko’s, doing some work for this book, and nipped out for lunch at one of a hundred quaint cafes. One thing that has really struck me since being here this time is the very real and important role nature has in the lives of Westerners. In the east, the lack of rain or snow in a normal winter is weather talk. Here, it’s different. The environment is not just an abstract topic of discussion. The health and well being of the land, the watershed, the trees, all of it is crucial to the simple survival of the people, their homes, and the way of life. While talking with an old timer on a bench outside the café, I asked about the snow the past couple of winters. It’s been down, I know, and I was really just asking for something to say. In my head, I sort of expected something like, “Yeah, nice warm winters. It’s been great.” But instead, the old guy says, “Yeah, it’s been terrible. Not enough snow, so no runoff. The lakes are down, the rivers are down. The forests are dry and brittle. We had 400,000 acres of fires this summer.” They lost firefighters out here, right from Missoula. Lost homes. Lost animals. The beautiful and living land was scorched. Trees that have stood for a hundred years or more lost in a flash.

We wandered back to a small car we had rented in order to get around and do some errands, but I kept thinking about the conversation, and all the things I’d seen in the past few days.

People are tougher in the west. You see houses and farms up mountains, perched on cliffs or just butted at the end of long dirt roads. It gets cold out here, and the snow does come, and these folks are cut off from the world for a while. Ranch after ranch we passed with hundreds of hay bales already saved, covered, put aside for animals all winter. These hay stacks tower above the fields, some covered with tarps or wood. Each house has a wall of firewood at least 6 feet tall, sometimes 40 feet long. Firewood for a nice fire, perhaps, but usually for heat, and sometimes to get them through a hard stretch.

David Romtvedt – Buffalo, WY

Downtown Buffalo is dotted with galleries and coffee shops. It’s a cute little town within sight of the Bighorn Mountains to the west, and just past an endlessly beautiful 400 mile stretch of badlands and high prairie grasses.

At the post office, two men in identical outfits, cowboy boots, jeans, starched white shirts and baseball caps finger through their mail and talk about a guy they know who is coming back to live in Buffalo. “It’ll be good to see the old rascal,” one says.

Main Street is pretty much it, but it’s terrific. Chamber of Commerce, lots of parking. Friendly folks in front of their stores or homes, because here the small homes on North Main butt up against the furthest reaches of the central business area.

The weather is unseasonable, warm, headed to the 80s in late October, and everyone’s making use of it. At the Catholic Church in town a maintenance man rakes and then sweeps up some leaves that are slowly deserting the confused trees. It’s not uncommon for there to be snow here at this time of year, and the long and warm autumn has everything a little off-kilter.

I find David Romtvedt not at the front door waiting for my visit, but hollering to me from around the side, from a fence that encircles the two small and pretty homes he, his wife, and daughter call home. One they live in; the other is the guest house. (After my interview we stroll over to the guest house. It’s a miraculous little place with gorgeous hardwood floors, airy windows, soft, inviting beds, and on the front porch – inexplicably – a dozen pairs of fluffy slippers, duck slippers, cat slippers, one set in plaid.)

David and I sit on the back porch of the house they actually live in, and we talk in between petting Leo, a happy dog who does not quite understand why anyone would sit when there was a small orange football to be tugged, thrown, and chewed.

David’s work is full of this town and its environs. He lets the “prairie, mountain, and sky” of the place in all the time. And the poems that result are alive, vital, and steeped in place. In many ways, he’s a perfect poet for this project.

We talk about a few poets he knows who I’ve met, or plan to. He and I have already met online; he’s filled out a sort of pre-interview set of questions that I developed after my first month on the road, so I know a lot about what he has to say already. I follow up some of these points, but mostly we just chat out there.

When we’re done, we go out into the back yard and I shoot some 35mm shots of him in the typical ways, against a tree, sitting by some corn stalks that appear odd, more art than science, right in the middle of his back yard. Eleven stalks, I think.

As I’m leaving, he volunteers to walk me, mostly, I think, to see this 29 foot rolling home of mine. He, like many of the poets I’ve met, are intrigued by the practical elements of this project. How does one get to Wyoming, Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana and back?

Leo comes along, and when we get to the motorhome, Leo is the first to bound in. My wife is glad to see us all. David looks around. I try to explain that the place is bigger when the slide outs are fully extended, but he likes it anyway. Leo is up front by the driver’s seat and I’m thinking that he looks pretty comfortable. Does he know we’re going into Montana now? Does he want to go? Could he help with the driving? Does he know the way?

Overheard at Mt. Rushmore

- If you don't start acting like a big boy, we're going RIGHT back to the motel.
- Not THAT button. Push the OTHER button. That's the WRONG button.
- Sit with grandma here in the shade. Grandma doesn't want to go any closer.
- That's not the zoom, THIS is the zoom.
- Zachary, Zachary, Zachary, are you listening to me?
- I think old Dubya would look pretty good up there next to Washington.
- You want more money? For what? An ice cream? Didn't Daddy already buy you a nice camera and this trip? Daddy doesn't have any more money.
- I can't hear you...I can't get a good signal...I'm NOT in the office. I've got the kids and I'm in South DAKOTA...at Mt. Rushmore. It's HOT here. I couldn't hear that last thing. WHAT? I have to call you back. You can't get a decent signal anywhere up here.
- Zachary, Zachary, Zachary, get OFF of that.
- Look at how good that little boy is being. You are being a very bad boy.
- Bo, Bo, Bo, Bobo, sit here with your grandma.
- Sarah, don't run. Don't run down there. Sarah. Sarah.
- He's being such an asshole this whole trip. He told me that once he got finished with rebuilding that truck that he was going to be sweet like when we got married.
- Zachary, get your hands out of your mouth. We have to go to that nice place and have lunch now. Zachary, Zachary.

RV Life, Vol. 1 - Rapid City, SD

All in all, the life in the big tin can is quite sweet. Check with me on different days about this, though, because I am sometimes a little dark, dark like the Grinch, dark like Monty Clift.

We have a 26" TV with DVD and VCR, and an auto satellite dish that pivots and twirls till it locks on a giant floating TV machine that floats - always - above the Texas gulf coast. We have hundreds of crystal clear channels, and mostly I just make it go from 201 to 545 as fast as possible.

We have the microwave, a nice refrigerator, three burners, and an oven big enough for the thinnest cookies ever made. We have slideouts in the living room and bedroom, enabling us to increase floor space in each of those rooms by 50%. The bedroom has a nice queen size bed, with room to walk around both sides. Storage is good. I have the seven shirts that make up my wardrobe, and my wife has along about what Diana Ross packs with her when she goes to Europe for a month. The living room has a 4-seater dining room table and a full length couch. You can really stretch out. When the sun's up, we have all the windows open, and the views are almost always pretty spectacular, given where we've been traveling.

The bathroom? Well, the shower is located about half way back in the RV, and on one side, and as long as you're under 6 feet tall, it's an efficient space. Imagine a phone booth. Then think of something smaller than that. Something that would fit inside a phone booth. With running water. And slick surfaces. The toilet area is across the hall from the shower, and includes a stool, wash basin, and enough storage for 2 toothbrushes, some soap, some towels, and the medium size tube of Crest. When you shave in there, your elbow beats a nice pattern on the side of the wall, but if your belly wasn't as big as mine, you'd think you were in a phone booth. Or something that would fit inside a phone booth. With a little chair.

The cab of the motorhome is great, CD player, weather band radio. We have a super handheld GPS unit - given to Beth by her former colleagues at WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. - that tells us where we are, and more importantly, which upcoming exits have gas stations - or a Taco Bell! The seats up front are comfy. They tilt, got the big captain's arms. It's like Kirk on the Enterprise, I guess, except I'm pretty sure Kirk didn't have to actually steer as they hurtled through the universe like I'm doing.

By day we drive, stopping absolutely whenever we want, making sandwiches at rest areas or scenic overlooks. Sometimes I take a cigar out and stand there, like today, staring out at the spectacular Badlands of central and western South Dakota. Sometimes we just sit inside, slurp our soup, make phone calls on one of the cell phones, or just marvel at the gas receipts that we sometimes hold up to the light...$87 at the Exxon in Sioux City, Iowa. Are we part owners there now?

Those who know me think it's inconceivable that I've made it through the first week. I'm a bit of a motel whore. I love the Holiday Inn Express, the Radisson, the Sheraton. I'll even be happy at the Comfort Inn, the Super 8 in a pinch. If there's an ice machine, cable TV, and a Denny's next door, I'm there. But the RV life is so amazingly different. While the inside of the RV never changes - much like hotel rooms all sort of run together - the various machinations around parking a 29 foot motorhome and hooking up to power, water, and sewer each night, and negotiating the sometimes dodgy campground setting, bugs, snakes, outdoor bathrooms, etc. is just not part of my nature.

Yet, here we are, day 8 and still married. My wife and I have a great system going; should I ever need a hotel day, she's said, just take it. We'll park the beast, pack up an overnight bag, and let the Ramada Inn care for me for the night. It's a great option, and one that I'm glad to have. Yet, I've not exercised it yet. I want to push on, in the spirit of great adventurers everywhere, Lewis and Clark, etc. I am tough as nails. While watching the Cubs and Marlins last night on TV, drinking a cold Coors Light and watching the hot dogs cook on the stove, I felt like an explorer crossing the Continental Divide. I was making my own way across the country.

Later, after finishing the new Grisham, I set the furnace to 70 degrees, turned off all the lights, got in under the sheets and comforter, thought about those settlers, traveling the same route I was on. They weren't so great.

David Allan Evans - Brookings, SD

God bless Wal-Mart. When we are low on supplies, and unable to park the giant beast in any of the now impossibly tiny town squares of the Midwest, a familiar sign up ahead tells us that all is safe. As we arrive in Brookings, South Dakota, we turn the Winnebago on a dime and extravagantly take up two nose-to-nose spaces in the far reaches of a gigantic parking lot. We stroll inside, buy some new RV anti-freeze, some tiny cans of soup, a magazine or two. We just stand there in the dazzling hum of enterprise. When it's time to go, we go freely. There will be another Wal-Mart. Even when things are darkest, we know one is waiting out there for us, with toilet paper, CDs, Pepsi, and batteries.

Evans's poetry was pretty new to me when I started working on this book. But I took to it immediately because it was so in sync with my own ethos about poetry, place, and the physical world.

He meets me at the door and we go down to his basement to chat. Like other basements I've seen on this trip, this one is full of books. It's well lit, and his computer rests in the far corner. We sit on comfortable chairs and start talking about poems from his upcoming book, a personal best collection of work of his from over 30 years.

I ask him about the poems written about his hometown, Sioux City, Iowa, and despite the fact that he's been in South Dakota now for 35 years, he talks fondly and in detail about the alleys and streets of his hometown.

He talks about his long interest in the physical world. He was a pole vaulter, played all kinds of sports, and is as comfortable fishing or hunting pheasant as he is writing about all of them. When we talk about places that have inspired his work, he rattles off a number of poems that couldn't have existed without the genesis that the world has provided him, a poem about bullfrogs, poems about the packing plant where his dad worked.

We go through his lovely, almost sprawling home, and go out into the back yard. It's sunny today. Crisp. It is a time in South Dakota when it occasionally is already snowing. But it's brilliant and pretty. We shoot some photos. We go around to the front and he admires the size of my motorhome. And then I'm gone.

On Dust, Corn, and Popcorn People

In the southwest corner of Iowa, we pull in to my brother-in-law's house south of a town called Red Oak. He's taught there for almost 25 years, and he's my wife's only brother. He's a funny and brilliant guy who knows enough about history and baseball to keep you talking all night.

My wife's family is from Iowa, and she was born just about 20 miles from here. One of our stops this weekend is to that little town, but we also have plans to see a square of countries, about 25 miles across, six counties, all in southwest Iowa.

Most folks have no concept of the Midwest. To them, it's just a flyover area of blank spaces, a green patch in a road atlas, a place they've never been. There is some sense of cold. If you say "Iowa," some folks imagine corn.

But there's so much corn you can't even fully describe it. As we drive the highways, dirt roads, and gravel roads (all brilliantly straight north and south or east and west) we are always bordering corn or soy bean fields. The corn stalks are dead, harvested, but still straight and standing and whistling a bit in any breeze. Up close they make a rustling sound, like cardboard against paper, dead leaves against a window. Field after field, and nothing but that on the horizon. Trees only intrude inside towns or around river bottoms. The fields themselves are uncluttered, rows and endless rows, sometimes a shocking group of silver silos, a single combine or harvester, a row of gigantic power lines escaping toward Nebraska.

On a blue and sunny Saturday my brother-in-law drives us around. We roll in his giant Buick on dusty roads, the dust pouring in vents or closed windows. Dust so thick it makes a fog around you. Think Pigpen. Think Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." Dust so heavy you can feel it on your tongue. You sneeze. You blow your nose, then take another deep breath of dust. The car is full of dust, but how could it not be. It's been a drought year and dust is what you get from that.

Every town we see has a population of about 800. Some smaller. Some larger. My brother-in-law tells us which towns are dying out, which ones are hanging on. They all look much the same, with old prairie-style homes from the turn of the century, a tiny post office, one or two restaurants (one's always a buffet). Farmers push into town in pickups or congregate on benches or by the feed stores.

Everyone waves, smiles. The sun beats down on a late autumn day. The crop for corn was okay this year, the soy beans won't be quite as good. But it's a beautiful place, even with the dust.

We roll into Hamburg, Iowa, where my wife was born, and where she's not been since that day. It's like most of the other towns we've seen, but a little larger, a little more prosperous. "These are all popcorn," my brother-in-law says, pointing at over a hundred squatty silos, about 40 feet high, about 40 feet across. They have a popcorn festival here each year. We find the hospital, a one story deal, three or four wings, and my brother-in-law looks at me and says, "You should be bowing. They probably have a statue of her in there." I look back and smile at my wife, but can't see her through the dust in the back seat.

We go through town and then head up a small hill that leads through some homes. (There are hills in Iowa, and Kansas, and all the rest.) "These are all popcorn people up here," my brother-in-law says, as we wind up and right into the driveway of a nice brick house, sprawling, green lawn. A kid on a lawn mower nods at us and keeps going. We get out for a minute and peer over the back of their back yard, fields, a distant Interstate, and dust rising off a county road and a single green pickup.

We go by another town, where my wife graduated high school, and another where my brother-in-law's high school volleyball team is going to play that week. One of his players is sick, his best player. She has mono or West Nile, something. She missed the last couple of games. The phones in the area have been buzzing about her; will she get well? Will she back to play Malvern? We have to have her back to beat Malvern.

We head up another gravel road. It's big enough for one and half cars of this size, so we're right in the middle. Dust roars in both sides of the car. I'm smiling, holding my breath. Corn rushes by both sides. Suddenly, a giant red combine appears ahead of us, moving in the same direction, but slower. My brother-in-law is pointing out the window on his side. "One of my players lives there," as he motions at a small farm house down a dirt road. We fly past the combine, two wheels half in the ditch, the combine's massive red arm right at eye level on my side.

When the day is over, we get out of the Buick and the dust settles on me, my clothes. I worry about the motorhome. My tin can will be full of dust. I will have to clean it all out before I get back on the road.

Jonathan Holden - Manhattan, KS

Holden is a sweet, wryly funny man who is quick with a hearty laugh. We sit in a spacious and beautiful living room in his home in Manhattan, and talk easily about all manner of things, my favorite being a story about some girls heckling him when he was young for being too skinny. He turns to me and says, "Skinny Man, Skinny Man," bringing back the memory with real pleasure and maybe the smallest amount of leftover tragedy.

He brings up Wordsworth a couple of times, and we both recall the same line, "emotion recollected in tranquility." He brings up Kim Novak and we both recall her as well, in the old William Holden film, Picnic.

Much of Holden's best work is nostalgic, and he's plumbed his own past most beautifully in his memoir Guns and Boyhood in America.

He reads to me from his earlier book, The Names of the Rapids, and recalls for me the genesis of some of those poems.

It's an autumn afternoon, but the outside sun suggests late July or something. A gigantic wooden deck stretches out to the side of the house. I tell Holden how much I like it, and he tells me he does, too, but he regrets how often it has to be resealed. He hires someone to do it, and thinks he probably pays too much. The dollar amount sounds high to me, but I think to myself there's not much of a chance I'd do it for any less, nor would I want to do it on my own if I still had one.

I shoot some pictures of Holden up against a blue sofa, the light coming in the gigantic living room. We shake hands and say our goodbyes. I walk out onto the small cul de sac and head for a bigger road, one big enough for the rolling tin can that I know is out there waiting for me.

Elizabeth Dodd - Manhattan, KS

The sun is going down in Manhattan when I arrive at Elizabeth Dodd's home near the campus of Kansas State. The sun peeks through a stand of trees and we sit on a screened in porch in her back yard. Cars go by, but the town seems awfully distant.

As with all of these interviews, it's remarkable to talk to her about her work. Like many academics, Dodd is where she is partly because of a job. Born in Colorado, raised in Appalachia, she finds herself in the high grass prairie of central Kansas, a striking and beautiful landscape, desolate, stark, and currently fashioned with millions of small red plants. Her own work has been informed by all of the places I've mentioned, but Kansas figures prominently in one from her book Archetypal Light. She reads to me on the porch, and I recognize some of the prairies I saw south of town. If I close my eyes I can see the poem's trees as human forms, hear the prairie on fire.

We go inside the house, past its reclaimed and beautiful hardwood floors, and into Elizabeth's study. A striking ceiling to floor window pours soft early evening light into the room. Elizabeth has two workspaces, a plain table facing the window, and then a laptop away from the window, facing a favorite painting by a former student.

We say goodbye and I carry my bag of cameras and recorders alongside the road. I'm lost in thought about Dodd's work, especially the poem I've just heard, and I'm stunned by the sight of my giant RV, waiting in the parking lot of a church nearby. My wife is reading a magazine, and she greets me with crackers, peanut butter, and Pepsi.

Minnie

The giant 29 foot Winnebago began rolling northward today. For those following along at home, we moved the Beltsville furniture to the new vacation home in Arkansas. The stuff didn't fit, of course, so boxes line every room, boxes of such variety and combinations that the house looks like it might be a sort of training center for young men who dream of being movers one day. The garage is full. There is space enough to lay on one of the two beds. You could stand on a kitchen counter, but you'd be unable to walk out either of the kitchen doors. There is a wall of boxes by the front door that looks like a fort built by children full of sugared drinks.

Yet, our stuff is safe from weather. The house will serve as our storage home away from home and we've left it in the caring hands of my in-laws. I secretly hope that a tornado will come through and take it all away, the furniture, the clothes, any of that old stuff that was too useless to fit in the big rolling coach.

But you gotta meet my in-laws. They are aces. They fed us for the the few days we were in Arkansas getting ready to run, and now they will wait behind and make sure the boxes don't get out onto the street, where they might be struck by one of the two cars that rolls through the sleepy burg. My wife's parents are remarkably supportive of this journey, but as I do with everyone, I imagine that inside they continue to wonder what sort of madness has overtaken us.

We made our promises to drive safe and keep in touch, and in the gloom of a Thursday morning, with pelting rain coming down, we creeped out of northwest Arkansas, into Missouri, and then up Highway 71.

The RV is top heavy. It's 12 feet high and 29 feet long, but it feels like the first pebble is going to flip it like one of those alligators doing a death roll on Discovery channel. At any speed over 55, the steering wheels pushes and pulls back and forth. The whole experience in the driver's seat is like wrestling a big angry hog, slick as snot, mad as hell. But when it's sitting on the side of the road, it's pretty great. Air conditioning. Big dish on the roof to beam in TV anywhere on the globe. The living room is roomy already, roomier when you activate one of the two slideouts - the other expands the bedroom nicely so you can walk all around the queen sized bed.

We eat lunch at a truck stop. But far too soon, we're out on the giant slab again, the wind from 16-wheelers buffeting us from both sides, the coach drifting from the white center line to the warning marks on the shoulder. My wife drives, too, and none of the above bothers her. I see her with cruise control on, her hand limply on the steering wheel. She's listening to "Rhythm is the Dancer" on the CD player and humming along. I want to scare her, or throw a badger in front of the vehicle to make her swerve. I want to see some of the wild grim fear I've been feeling.

What the hell is wrong with her?