Roadmap of the Mind

Our blog has essentially been related to travel or travel-related topics, with the occasional personal story thrown in. With the Covid-19 pandemic, we, like most of the world, have had to limit our travel, and have essentially been staying home, except for trips to the grocery store and visits to my parents at their farm. 

And so, I have more and more turned to my source of balm for a weary soul - - books. I select a book, or sometimes, the book selects me. I retreat to my favorite yellow chair under the window where I snuggle in with a book that offers greater understanding of the world, or adventure, or insight to a particular topic, or just a calm retreat from the world. Sophie, the little white dog, perches on the back of my chair, with her front feet propped up on the window sill, watching and occasionally napping. Sophie searches our block while I, through my book, search the world - - she, looking to protect us from the dangers of mailmen, UPS drivers, or anybody that dares walk down the sidewalk in front of the house; I, looking for understanding, escape, adventure, or answers from the pages of my latest selection.

Between naps, Sophie watches and protects me
from the outside world while I read.

In early March, as the world recoiled from fear of the pandemic and reeled with the concept of imposed isolation, my effort was on trying to understand the bigger picture of man in a world over which he had little, if any, control. I selected Guns, Germs, and Steel (published 1997) by Jared Diamond to help me understand the interworking complexities of societal development. Somehow, statements such as “…the epidemic dies out for any of several reasons, such as being cured by modern medicine, or being stopped when everybody around has already been infected and either becomes immune or dies” (p. 208) is neither enlightening nor reassuring.  By page 401, I was amazed at the depth of the author’s research and the complexity of the undertaking to correlate, from ancient times to modern times, the relationship of science to politics to geography. Intriguing, but I was left with more questions than answers.

My next venture into understanding pandemics was John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza which considers scientific, political and societal history in his study of the causes and effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic. The edition I had was published in 2005; the original publication date was one year earlier. In his afterward, he stated “…it is almost physically impossible to produce, distribute, and administer hundreds of millions of doses, and possibly a billion or more, within six months after the emergence of a new pandemic virus. It is also likely that protection against a new virus will require two doses of vaccine, not the usual one.”  (p. 455) Mr. Barry also voiced concern over “…our reliance on companies overseas for fifty percent of our [vaccine] supply.” (p. 46) His comments, seventeen years ago, raised the question then, and it is echoed today:  Are we listening carefully enough to scientists to protect our future health and well-being? Apparently, the answer, at least back then, was “no”.

My grandfather in his WWI uniform.  The war claimed
almost 20 million lives: 9.7 million military and 10 million
civilians. The pandemic the following two years took almost
50 million lives worldwide - 2.5 times more than the war. 

Having digested two tomes on pandemics, I turned my attention to novels, and I decided to select books from the list of Pulitzer Prize winners to help understand the human condition. Josephine Johnson intrigued me. Although she was from Kirkwood, Missouri (a St. Louis suburb), I had never heard of her. As it turns out, she is also the youngest Pulitzer Prize recipient, having received her award in 1935 at the age of twenty-four.  Her prize-winning Now in November also happens to have been her first published novel.

The book feels very autobiographical to me. The novel chronicles a year in the life on a hard-scrabble farm during the dust-bowl era and the Great Depression. The family tries to eke out a living, isolated by geography, mired in poverty, and living in what today would be called a dysfunctional family unit. There are scenes reminiscent of stories that my father related to me that took place during his childhood during the Depression. I found the book immensely depressing but eloquently written, with “poetic” prose. Though reflecting the isolation of the 1930s, the novel also felt current in its mood and tenor. “Much of everything, it seemed afterward, was like the beginning – changing and so balanced between wind and sun that there was neither good nor evil that could be said to outweigh the other wholly. And then we felt we had come to something both treacherous and kind, which could be trusted only to be inconsistent…” (p. 7-8)

My dad is the child sitting on the tailgate of the wagon, on his way
to church. This picture would have been taken about 1935 or 1936.

My mom (in bib overalls) and her brother - my uncle - with
their parents, sometime in the mid-1930s.

When I was four years old, my parents took teaching jobs in the mountain community of Luna, New Mexico. Our small family lived in the “teacherage.” We were the only family in the area who were neither a part of the Mormon community nor Native Americans living on the Mescalero Apache Reservation.  That is the basis for the next Pulitzer Prize winner that I picked, The House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday. This 1969 book chronicles a young Native American soldier who returns from World War II to his tribal homeland but finds himself “caught between two worlds.”

I found this author’s style difficult to read – which is not a derogatory comment about the author, only my inability to fully grasp all the strands of mystic storytelling and “psychic dislocation” and the land as sense of place. I did appreciate, and identified with, the landscape as an integral part of the narrative. I simply failed as a reader to pull all the threads together. I found myself getting lost in the narrative approach.

This is me, with my Boston Terrier, in front of
the school in Luna, NM in February 1957.

A "papoose" is a cradleboard for carrying a child. I still have the
papoose that Dorothy Cromwell made for me almost 65 years ago.

This picture happens to be Mesa Verde (Colorado) but there were 
Native American "pueblos" similar to this throughout New Mexico.

Yet another story that focused on location, isolation, and political upheaval was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. The book opens in 1922, five years after the Russian Revolution, and continues through 1954. The Bolsheviks are now in control of the country. Within the walls of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, thirty-year-old Count Alexander Rostov finds himself under house arrest, living in an attic room of the grand old hotel. Since Mike and I had visited Moscow in 2018 and we had had the opportunity to view many of the landmarks referenced in the novel, I felt I had more of a glimpse into the setting. Towles has an uncanny ability to draw the reader into the characters’ lives in a mesmerizing way. I found the writing style lucid and I cared about the characters: “…didn’t he also exhibit an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions, one can restore some sense of order to the world?”  (p. 459)

The Metropol Hotel in Moscow, the setting for A Gentleman in Moscow.
Mike and I spent three days in Moscow in the spring of 2018 at the
beginning of our Moscow-to-St. Petersburg river cruise. 

This is the side of the Kremlin that faces Red Square. The building with
the green domed roof houses Vladimir Putin's office. The scaffolding
in Red Square was being erected in preparation for a rock concert.

Annunciation Cathedral, mentioned in A Gentleman in Moscow, is
one of several churches inside the walls of the Kremlin. Built over
centuries by various Tsars, many were looted during the Bolshevik
Revolution, but all have since been rebuilt.

The Bolshoi Theatre opened in January, 1825. Before the October
Revolution it was part of the Imperial Theaters of the Russian
Empire, along with the Maly Theater in Moscow and several
theaters in St. Petersburg.

Turning to tales of strong women with a sense of adventure, I picked up Vicki Constantine Croke’s biographical account of Ruth Harkness, a 1930s Manhattan socialite who transformed herself into a world-class trekker in order to capture a live giant panda along the border between China and Tibet. 

The Lady and the Panda is set against the backdrop of great tumult taking place in China as the Nationalists and the Communists vie for control; as provincial leaders shift allegiances; as tens of thousands of students demonstrate for or against the government; and as the young widow embarks on a quest that earlier cost her husband his life. Harkness entered the world of trekkers and explorers, a world where women were definitely not welcome. This stalwart pioneer succeeded in a time and place where many of lesser fortitude failed. “Nothing could tempt her away from the odyssey.” (p. 102)

Giant Panda in the Beijing Zoo. We visited China in 2004.

A view of the entrance to the Three Gorges from the deck of a
riverboat on the Yangtze River. The Three Gorges Dam was nearing
completion and the natural beauty of this area was threatened
to be inundated beneath the reservoir created by the dam.

Hiking the Great Wall, along with thousands of other
tourists, mostly Chinese. The Great Wall stretches 13,171
miles across the northern border of ancient China.

Bixi (or Bi Xi) is a figure from Chinese mythology.
He is one of nine sons of the Dragon King, and is
often depicted as a dragon with the shell of a turtle.
Rubbing his head is said to bring good luck.

The Terracotta Soldiers depict the armies of Qin Shi Huong, the first
Emperor of China. They were buried with him in 210-209 BC to protect
him in the afterlife. The roof over the site was erected by archeologists
to protect the site as excavation proceeded.

Close-up of some of the Terracotta Warriors. So far, archeologists
have unearthed some 8,000 soldiers over a 20 square mile area.
It is said that no two faces are identical, and that they may have
been modeled after real soldiers of the Emperor's army.

Of course, there were novels interspersed with these selections.  A retreat from reality to another time and place can be an enjoyable diversion that “light” mysteries create, where nefarious plots challenge the mind to untangle the clues and discover “who done it.”  Whether it is Marion Chesney (M. C.) Beaton’s quaint world of a Scottish hamlet; or Donna Leon’s picturesque, enduring city of Venice; or Elizabeth Peters’ mysterious archaeological sites of Egypt, reading expands the world beyond the walls of home.

Iona, a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland.
Closer to home, parts of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, looks remarkably
like this, and it is no wonder that Scottish immigrants settled in the area.

The Valley of the Kings in Egypt, taken during a trip there
with my parents in 1988. Mike chose not to go on that
trip, and has regretted that decision ever since.
 

As a young adult, I travelled on several occasions with my parents in England. While visiting the Lake District in Cumbria one year, we “mailed ourselves” to the cottage once home to the delightful author Beatrix Potter. Yes, “mailed ourselves” - - we paid the parcel post price for the privilege of riding with the mail carrier in his truck. It was, of course, a very slow and inefficient way to travel. When he stopped for tea, we, too, enjoyed a “cup ‘a” and scones with clotted cream. We stopped at every residence. But it was a perspective that one seldom gets of the places that he or she visits; a chance to travel at a pace that allows the essence of the place to seep into one’s perspective.

The book The Art of Beatrix Potter with geographically organized text by Emily Zach, “…provides a visual tour of the areas in the British Isles that most influenced her work.” (overleaf).  I fondly remember paying a call to Hill Top Farm, where Jemima Puddle Duck, Squirrel Nutkin, and Peter Rabbit once dwelt.

A typical English cottage in the Lake District. Beatrix 
Potter published her first novel, The Tale of Peter Rabbit,
in 1902, and went on to publish more than twenty
additional books for young readers.

Our need to travel remains strong, even if it is through the pages of a book rather than by plane; seeing the world through an author’s eyes rather than through the windshield.

It is fine to reminisce, and I am glad we’ve had the opportunity to travel and allow these memories to exist in the first place. Yet, we look forward to new adventures. With that thought in mind, I scan the table of contents of Lonely Planet’s Where to Go When to start dreaming and planning future overseas journeys.

Chobe National Park, in Botswana, March 2014

Machu Picchu, Peru. In addition to seeing this spectacular
"lost" city, we got to go white-water rafting on the Urabamba
River. Rising in the Andes Mountains, the Urabamba forms part
of the headwaters of the Amazon, the world's longest river.

Mike at the Parthenon, Athens, Greece, in 1996.

On a visit to the Galapagos Islands with an old friend
from college. Charles Darwin visited here in 1835, and
his observations of Galapagos' species inspired his Theory
of Evolution. The archipelago is a province of Ecuador.

But since we signed up for Covid-19 shots more than a month ago – with still no indication of when the vaccine will be available in our area – I realistically pull out Backroads and Byways of Missouri to see if author Archie Satterfield has discovered any hidden gems locally.

Bollinger Mill, near Cape Girardeau, is a massive four-story mill that 
pre-dates the Civil War. Now a State Historical Site, visitors can still
observe corn being ground. The 140 foot covered bridge is the
oldest of four covered bridges still standing in the state.

So, until we can safely travel again, we can still discover pathways to understanding, follow avenues to adventure, or traverse expressways to escapism, and we can do it through books - the Roadmap of the Mind.  And when it is all behind us and life returns to normal (whatever that may be) and we can travel once again, we will get back to enjoying new adventures and exciting Road Stories.

One of the things I collect are these globe banks. My Catholic-school-educated
husband tells me they were banks in which kids saved their change to donate
to overseas missions. Appropriate, since one of the companies with whom we
have travelled, Overseas Adventure Travels (OAT) contributes large sums to
support schools and other charities in foreign countries.

P.S. In the interval since we wrote this blog, we’ve gotten our first injection of the Covid-19 vaccine, and our second shot is less than three weeks away. It feels like we've really turned a corner. It is time to begin planning new adventures. We look forward to seeing you out there.