This Vast Land of Ours

It is a long way from Tamworth NH to Albuquerque NM. It took us 6 days to cover 2,400 miles through New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. The trip reminded us of how vast our country is and how easy it is to forget that.

The landscape looked familiar to our New England and Midwest origins until we got to Missouri and then west Oklahoma and west Texas. There, the horizons flatten out until there is nothing (except windmills) as far as the eye can see. The flatness was disorienting to our parochial New Hampshire senses. So huge and unoccupied! And we still have another 1,000+ miles before we get to San Francisco.

Michelle found this cool poem about horizons that resonated with us:

Horizon
Towards you as I walk on
To get nearer
you go farther

Horizon
You are an illusion
You are infinitely stretching points
Where sky meets earth
And the duet they dance

Horizon
You are the point Where blue mist of sky
And lovely green of earth
Mingle and merry
So close and yet so distant.

Bharati Nayak

Of course, when you travel this far hauling a 26’ trailer, you become connoisseurs of highway surfaces — concrete and asphalt in conditions of new and smooth, aging, or dilapidated. And you become very attentive to who maintains their Interstates and who doesn’t. I-70 on the East side of Indiana has a well-deserved reputation as one of the worst stretches of highway in the country. If you search it on RV traveler sites, you frequently get the recommendation to “Avoid it at all costs!” But you can see the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill at work everywhere – even east Indiana, where you drive through 50 miles of construction. (We did survive the rough spots, although we are in the middle of a shock absorber repair as a result of their abuse!)

The massive wind farms in Oklahoma and Texas are amazing. They counter the mainstream narrative of Red vs. Blue states and their attitudes towards renewable energy. Texas is the largest producer of wind energy in the country, accounting for 33% of the national total, followed by Oklahoma (10%), Kansas (8%), and Iowa (7%), all “Red” states. A similar pattern shows up on the states where wind constitutes the highest proportion of electricity generation, with South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and New Mexico all relying on wind for more than a quarter of their electricity. It makes sense, of course, because of their vast open spaces and abundant wind. (We often drove through 40-45 mph gusts.) It was not uncommon to see oil wells sprinkled around the wind turbines – a weird contrast of energy from today’s wind, and vegetable matter from hundreds of millions of year ago, blending into our power systems.

And of course, we shouldn’t forget the butterflies! Western Oklahoma is part of the monarch butterfly migration route to their wintering landscapes in Mexico. We were driving on two lane roads through west Oklahoma, and the butterflies were everywhere. Since we enjoy them in our fields in Tamworth, we find it mind boggling that these beautiful and fragile creatures can fly 3,000+ miles and survive – about the same distance for us to get to San Francisco – and we complain about the long travel days!

We are in New Mexico for four weeks now, and it is really nice to be settled down for a while. Today is our first day to travel around and get our bearings.

More to come soon!