Road Trip

by amfreedman

I took August off, like the therapists. We went West. God, the effortful good cheer of road trips. Come on kids, get in the car!

We drove for hours up terrifying roads to obscure places and when we arrived we always found parking lots full of cars and Chinese grandmothers with big hats and dark sunglasses. If my pictures were honest, there would be a crowd of people in half of them, elbowing each other out of the way for an uninterrupted view of the personal sublime.

On the Icefields Parkway, signs hectored us with a polite mantra: “When you approach or feed an animal, you are taking away its wildness, and that is the most precious thing about it.” I was stuck on that phrase–what was the quality of wildness, that you could capture it? Why was wildness described as a most precious possession? If it was something you had, was it also something that could be taken away? Addled, antifreeze-addicted bighorn sheep nuzzled our car–come on, come on, man, just a lick, just a lick. We saw a bear cub ambling off the road, and tourists on the roadside jostled to take photographs. Majestic elk acted majestic. You are taking away my wildness.

Eleanor Roosevelt said scare yourself every day. J said, scare your mother every day. I was bred for caution, not for daring. Signs on the road warned us of all the ways we might die: avalanche, elk crossing, dangerous curves ahead. The trail was closed for “wolf activity.” We traveled in tight groups of four, and sang songs to keep the bears away. Tall rocks invited clambering, and small crevices invited broken ankles.  We ate tiny wild strawberries that tasted of wine and earth.

We tricked the boys into a hike up the Cavell meadows. They talked about cards the entire time. As we left, we heard a sound like tearing, like thunder, like your own teeth grinding in your  own skull, and as we looked back a piece of the glacier had sheared off and fallen. It only lasted as long as a held breath. B said, I’m going to tell that to my grandchildren. When we left the parks our eyes had to get used to the trash and clatter of billboards on ordinary highways. We had seen only beautiful things for so long.

The Athabasca glacier reminded me of a rhinoceros I once saw at the Bronx Zoo. He was massive, indifferent to our stares, and nearly immobile. Signs mark the land the glacier once held, and where it retreated it has left only barren and rocky moraine. We said we were on the glacier extinction tour. The crowfoot glacier has lost a claw. The angel glacier is losing a wing. The angel glacier is losing a wing. Do you need a clearer sign?