July 23rd - Pre-trip musing….Why this trip?

In my July 5th (first) posting, I mused about a few of the reasons why I thought I was making this trip. Then I scratched most of them and left just a few. But as I get closer to the trip, I find myself wanting to clarify those reasons for myself so that I do not lose sight of them during the trip and turn back at some point if the going gets rough, which I am generally not inclined to do. So, here is my attempt to crystallize those reasons for myself, to the extent that any of us can really be certain about why we decide or do something.

Before I list my putative reasons for wanting to make this trip, let me say this. This trip really is no big deal. Anyone can get up in the morning after a night in a cozy tent, make a wholesome breakfast from Whole Foods, break camp, get into a well-equipped Land Rover Defender 90, drive 250 miles or so, stopping only for gas and some supplies, consult his iPad to figure out where to camp for the night, find that campsite, set up camp, call it a night about 9:00 p.m., and then repeat the whole process for the next 65 days. Granted, there is a certain welcome degree of challenge, complexity and risk associated with this particular trip, considering where the roads are (or are not, as the case will be sometimes), that I am traveling alone, that I will need to be with my dogs the whole time, and that I will, at one extreme or another, be 6000 miles away from home or 900 miles and five days from the nearest vet. But if anyone wants to read about a trip that was indeed a big deal, read George Kennan’s “Tent Life in Siberia.” If there’s one thing that makes this trip a cakewalk for me, it is what I read in that book. George, by the way, is a distant cousin of the well-know diplomat of the same name, and I was born just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of his birth, so there’s a bond of sorts there between us.

If you read Kennan's book, you'll undertsand why my journey is a pienbce of cake compared to his. And if that doesn;t convince you, you might want to read Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace,  his account of a fateful adventure he and his friend Leonidas Hubbard took to Labrador in 1903.  I read the book in 2002 as I made by way in my Defender across Labrador, coming as close as 40 miles to the spot where Hubbard died.  Wallace's book is the most well-read book in Labrador and Hubbard, Wallace and Hunnbvar's wife Mina are all heroes there to many. On my way home from Labrador, using a minimal description in Wallace's almost 100-year old book, I found Hubbard's unmarked grave in a cemetery in Haverstraw, New York,  a little river town just a few miles down the Hudson from where I grew up. Bizarrely, no one in the town --- even at the llibrary --- knew who he was.  Read that book and you'll understand what lures me back to Labrador, albeit in 2011 fashion and not 1903.  Wallace, incidentally,  lived and died in Beacon, New York, just across the Hudson River from my boyhood home. I visited his grave, too, on my way back from Labrador in 2002.
Okay, now for my reasons, in no particular order. (Kennan, by the way, had one reason to go to Siberia, to install telegraph poles, all of which turned out to be useless because of the success of the subsequent undersea cable. I will not install any telegraph poles on my trip, but I will occasionally use my satellite or cell phones or iPad to communicate with others.)

Reason #1 – Because at one time I made the “decision” to go, and so now I must go.

Reason #2 – Because I can.

Reason #3 – Because I can find no evidence that anyone’s done it before (and I think I know why).

Reason #4 – “Because it’s there.” (George Mallory)

Reason #5 – To escape the oppressive heat in DC.

Reason #6 – To treat the dogs to one last big road trip in case they will not be able to do it in the future.

Reason #7 – To treat myself to one last big road trip in case I will not be able to do it in the future.

Reason #8 – See once again some of the spectacular and breathtaking views and sites I saw on my earlier trips.

Reason #9 – Experience some new spectacular views and sites I did not see on my earlier trips.

Reason #10 – Experience once again the magnetic lure of being “on the road.” (Did you know that Jack Kerouac started his 1951 journey and book “On the Road” on Route 6 at the Bear Mountain Bridge just 10 miles from where I lived at the time?) After three or four days, it really does put you into a different sphere that pulls you forward.

Reason #11 – To take a respite from the often dysfunctional, polluted atmosphere in DC. (Fortunately, the people with whom I associate here do not fall into this category.)

Reason #12 – Do some serious thinking. (In my Defender 90 with its big All-Terrain tires, it is impossible to talk with anyone or listen to a radio or the like, so thinking time is plentiful.)

Reason #13- Get out of my comfort zone and learn how to live at a minimum level.

Reason #14 – Escape civilization and with it the stream of  bad news that civilation brings, at least as reported by the media day in and day out.

Reason #15 – Get away from the internet, although I will have an iPad for emergencies, a blog and a limited e—mail capability for positive reasons.  (I will also have a satellite phone for emergencies sinc Verizon' cell phone coverage in Canada is rare.)

Arson #16 – Use this opportunity to serve as a giant punctuation mark in my life, and move on to the next sentence, paragraph, chapter or book, or whatever.

Reason #17- To meet those one or two people I’ve met on trips like this before who added value to my life.

Reason #18- To give myself an opportunity to keep in shape with those principles that have served me well, i.e., there’s a solution for every problem; don’t give up till I find the solution; if there’s a problem, fix it, figure out how to prevent it again, and then move on; etc.

Reason #19 – Learn more about the animals of the world to help me focus my concerns.

Reason #20 - To expereince how quite different but also how similar we people all are on this continent, at least above the 48th parallel.

There may be other reasons. If I think of them, I will add them at the bottom later. For the time being, the above should be enough to take me 8,000 miles away from here, but then I have to get home.

Incidentally, if you fed these 20 reasons as answers into IBM's  Watson, he/she would probably respond, “What is on the road for 66 days with one’s dogs from D.C. to the Arctic via Labrador?”  If that is the case, reason #21 is that this is the only trip I can take.