Space and Time converge

Einstein believed time and space were two aspects of the same reality; clearly different, but fundamentally equivalent. Travelling has a way of making Einstein's observation abundantly clear, in that each day takes you farther from home, both physically and chronologically. And although travel brings up obvious questions about space-- why the West is perceived as more grandiose than the East for example-- it is perhaps the questions of time we should be asking. Several weeks in a car in one direction will bring you to lands far different than home; mountains and dust replace forest, ranches replace farms.

This seems normal. In fact, it would seem abnormal for the land not to change. But several weeks in a car and the landscape of time also changes. It's like being in a foreign place where everyone speaks the same language-- knowing the day of the week intimately, perhaps counting down the days til their weekend-- and you have this sense that you studied these days and weeks in school at some point, but that they've been lost in translation somehow. "Why are people riding ATVs in the woods after dark?" Then a moment of mental triangulation, pinpointing that monument on the horizon of your memory, the last firm connection you had between a place and a day of the week-- followed by some cautious finger counting: did we sleep at that campsite one night or two? Is there a day between Wednesday and Friday? And in a flash you understand. It's Friday night, and most people aren't going to bed when the sun goes down. But it feels so normal. And that is the shock-- that yourself a few weeks ago would ridicule the you now for being in bed by eight. These behaviours aren't ingrained. The bodies' rhythms, if you want to call it that, switch from speed metal to slow dance without missing a beat. So smoothly that it takes a troupe of prepubescent ATV riders to make you realize the music is still playing.

A year and a day

It's been exactly a year and a day since my last post here, and it seems fitting that I'm still writing about the South-- a different south to be sure, but not so different in all the ways we might think. Still on the road, this time exploring the southern parts of America: beginning in Raleigh and heading down to Florida and then out to Tucson by car; followed by a trip from Tucson to San Francisco (and possibly onward to Portland) by bicycle. Writing this here in a library in San Diego, I can't tell you how the story ends-- two months in to this three month odyssey, and I feel things are only beginning. And I apologize in advance; the opportunities to write are few and far between, and the photos will have to wait.