Where the Road Goes April Dear Marz: April 1, Fresno, California We''re on the road and beginning to move toward you. My thanks and love go ahead of me to Boulder. We''ve finished dinner and cleaned up, the biggest of all big deals on an environmentally pure Environmental Walk. It''s worse than the kosher demands of my great grandmother. When we stopped for the day we did introductions: name, job, reason for being on The Walk. "Tig Warriner," I said, "part-time librarian." I couldn''t give my reason(s) for being here; they''re too complex, so I told them about you, that you had tried to talk me out of going, and when you realized how much I wanted to go, helped me choose a tent. There were sounds of amazement and now I have a reputation as a liberated woman.
I told them we had two daughters, but I didn''t give their names. One eccentricity is enough. This tent is excellent, and I found the envelope with your note and the money when I unpacked my toilet things. Write to me. I know it''s hard, but with a hundred of us on The Walk, wherever we stop, phoning will be a hass≤ I''ll always be calling from some campsite''s public phone or at least in a wrangle of impatient callers lined up for miles,urgent as the ladies'' room lines at the intermission of a play. I''ve asked Justice to write; I doubt she will. Maybe Solidarity will want to put in a word. Even the younger generation might.
I''ll keep their letters, and together with mine, they might form a document of this year for all of us. Someone''s calling. More when we get organized and there''s time. Love, Tig P.S. Poppy says hi--she has put her tent on the extras truck and come in with me. There''s plenty of room and it''s nice to swap foot massages and talk over the day. Dear Marz, April 2 We started collecting answers to our questionnaire today.
We''re to use our eyes, too, and keep a record of what we see on the land we pass. Poppy imagines hundreds of houses and apartments all over the country where our itinerary is being spread out on desks or flutters from magnets on the sides of refrigerators. Yet, here we sit at our second campsite: we''re arguing about the rightness of having an evening fire. A young man, Kevin (?), makes a plea for the fire as being necessary to the soul of The Walk even though it may affect the natural environment. He says we''ll need to gather, for announcements and rubbing our bunions. The purists murmur. A fire would be one of our few luxuries. The food won''t be.
It comes hot(ish) from the cook-wagon, and it is tasty only because we are exhausted and ravenous. The group is diverse--singles, families, a few children, but Poppy and I seem to be the oldest here. There''s some prejudice, or daintily expressed fastidiousness. "What is the policy toward Walkers unable to keep up?" a young man said, looking directly at us. This Walk isn''t supposed to be a marathon. We have five trucks and five cars following us, and if people tire, they can catch rides. Grumbles. Someone behind us said, "With time off for trips to the beauty parlor.
" That was a shot at Poppy. Poppy at sixty-five isn''t gray; her work in Hollywood incorporates that place''s fear of age, and when I asked her if she would let her hair go for the duration she looked as though I had asked her to do the walk barefoot. Her hair is even redder than when you met her, and she wears the same hard, red lipstick with eyeliner and mascara right out of a Queen of the Nile remake. Fear of surgery has kept her from having a face-lift, so, as she describes it, she is a redhead with a face that can hold a five-day rain. Do you remember that there was, in 1969, a wanted poster on me? That''s the face I remember, not the one I see in the mirror. I''m always surprised at what''s actually there. The Walk thinks of us as potential drawbacks. Poppy is a bizarre and I am a relic, a tall, stocky old lady, with a recent fling of moles and a habit of picking at them when she thinks no one is looking.
Antigone. No one knows that. I whispered to Poppy that we should find out who made that beauty parlor crack and fix his sleeping bag. The meeting goes on, mired in detail. I''m fading fast. I want to make this Walk. I hope I can . DIARY ENTRY April 4, Sequoia, California More arguing.
We have a council and five committees. During the evening''s Bunion Rub, they report. Some people want all the rules in detail, carved, etched. I dozed. Kevin: suggestion about a social meeting on Sundays. We have been walking in good mountain country, refreshed. Soon we will be going down into Death Valley, all the challenge and glory anyone could want. Thank God we don''t carry our own loads; we''re followed by the equipment trucks; we walk unencumbered.
NO PURSES!! I keep measuring. I''m sore, slow. I''m worried about not making it. We''ve been lucky so far, but our strains and sprains take longer to heal. Our bodies forget and forgive nothing. The young people dance when the day is over. Weather: warm. Something I can''t identify is in bloom, fillingthe air with a perfume that mixes with the smell of the cedar that grows here.
We seem more sensitive to smell, flavor, touch, sound--not since childhood-- We meet with tourists in the campgrounds, and the residents of the towns we pass. Questionnaires: we''re surprised at the eagerness everyone shows to register an opinion, to tell the story of the changes that have come. The yes-no stuff takes three minutes; it''s the verbatim statement that takes the time. People''s hands form a shape for their thoughts. Their faces are perplexed. They have not been able to say what they suddenly wanted to express. Moms, Detox, May something Hello? Are you there? I have a creepy feeling of not being able to get to you, and it reminds me of stuff I thought I had forgotten, like that time when you were camped out at nuclear sites in California, and during the Vietnam War when you were protesting, or in jail. Are you okay? Sixty-two isn''t old.
In some places, it''s not even old enough for senior citizen discounts, but marching across the country and camping out in the wind and rain for a year? I called Justice and she said, "It''s Mother doing her thing again." I called Dad and he said he had learned years ago that if he wanted to stay married he had to take you as you came. He said this would be a hard one, though. Remember when you dragged me to the camp-in at Rocky Flats? I was married then and had Sam. When Cary was born and Lewis and I split, you wanted me ready for life five minutes after he left. We said things and I flipped. It took a year before I felt like it was me in here, living. This morning I was thinking about that and how it has worked out.
I wouldn''t have gone into social work originally if not for you, and Detox is part of that. Childhood memories: some painful, but some heroic. Remember New York--the big anti-war demonstration in 1969? We were in a park--Central Park, I guess--and you were teaching the Vietnam protesters what to wear and how to go limp and what to do to protectthemselves from blows--things you''d learned in the civil rights protests. It was the first time I thought of you as more than my mother. I was thirteen, self-conscious as hell. People were arguing tactics, you were telling them about keeping clean, wearing clothes that didn''t show the dirt, simple blouses, no frills, hair short and neat, etc. You said they should try for a middle-class look, and never yell. The arguers were loud, repulsive.
They were dirty and they wanted the dirt to show--they were middle-class kids trying for low-class identity. They thought their rags and stink would unite them to the po∨ you said it would only make people laugh at them, the poor along with everyone else. "We want our mess in the faces of the captors!" a protester yelled--and he stuck his face into yours, messing his long greasy hair. I saw your nose wrinkle. I was furious. If I had had a gun I would have blown him away without breaking the rhythm of my Juicy Fruit. Isn''t it funny what''s dug up, walking through the old castle? Keep dry, Moms, keep clean. Wash your socks and underwear every night.
Try to get good food and stay away from greasy snacks. Sol Dear Solidarity, April 8, Paniment Springs, Cal. I never told you the details of how I came to be on this Walk. I guess you and your sister do think "put a cause in front of her and an invisible orchestra tunes up, banners start flying, and a scarlet cape ripples out behind her." At Thanksgiving I told how I was planning to do this Walk and how long it would take. I saw Justice''s eyes shoot up--you know her ceiling-inspector-God-help-us look. You shrugged. Hope and Ben cheered.
Sam and Cary cheered. My big support came from our grandchildren. Hope and Ben knew their mother thought I was being ridiculous, but they wished me well. Who else''s grandmother does such exciting things? I think Ben actually said that. I had thought to stay tucked up in my retirement. Being sixty hit me in a way that being fifty had not. One day, at a.