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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Stuck in traffic for hours and miles and miles. Another smoggy 90+ degree day in the San Fernando Valley heading east from the 2 on the 134, then the 210 and finally turning north on the 15.
What an appropriate setting for my escape from Los Angeles and my 3,001-mile trek with some of what I had accumulated during almost 40 years in Tinseltown in the back of a 15-foot box truck.
And my three tortoises riding shotgun on the floor and seat beside me… Redfoots so, unlike the protected desert tortoise, they were legal to travel outside of California.
It was more than a move, more than an adventure. If anything could prove that I had moved beyond four and a half years of semi-isolation between Covid and a severe reaction to the vaccine that doctors initially diagnosed as early-onset dementia, this would be it.
But the trip was not just the physical challenge of crossing the country, it turned into a reaffirmation of the belief in the essential goodness of the American people despite all that divides us.
Americans are all better than our politics, better than our religious differences. With those differences dominating the news and being exploited by all and sundry, how wonderful it was to find a plethora of people along my way across America of different ages, colors, languages, and countries of origin so willing to help others.
The first night a cleaner at a rest area just over the Arizona border lent me her personal mirror so I could insert my contact lenses. I hadn’t noticed the night before that mirrors no longer deck bathroom walls in many places due to the threat of vandalism.
Then there was the gas station cashier who got a local truck driver to explain the intricacies of bypassing St. Louis, a knot of expressways that puts LA’s Four-Level to shame. And when a car parked in front of my U-Haul blocking my exit near Rochester, another person pumping gas helped me back up.
From California on through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas – yes, that Texas where the airwaves were full of miracle diet drugs and testimonials to the transformative power of Jesus Christ.
Christianity is in the actions of the American people, not the harangues of the Bible-thumping talk show hosts nor the politicians determined to tear apart the fabric of our society.
Hey, how many others have noticed that Donald Trump is sounding more and more like a fire-and-brimstone preacher at some revivalist meeting?
Then on by way of Oklahoma, Missouri, around St. Louis into Illinois, across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, finally passing through New York into Vermont.
Riding into the rain from Akron to beyond Buffalo, the downpour one of a palette of beautiful shades of grey against ranges of clouds sitting on hills, spectacular lightning displays intermittently revealing the start of fall colors.
Later the setting sun breaking through the watery remnants of tattered clouds delicately kissing the tops of the first golden and briefly orange autumn leaves of the oaks and maples.
Somehow shortening my trip to just 2,998 miles by heading north to the Canadian border to cross above Lake Champlain avoiding the purportedly more direct and certainly more scenic route to the south that twisted its way through multiple byways and country roads with signage sure to be hidden in the mist and pouring rain.
Political signs of various persuasions and colors with names often unknown outside of the immediate area.
Halloween displays ranging from a simple pumpkin to a gothic horror front yard inviting drivers to slow down, if not stop completely, to peruse its intricacies.
Turning right at Rouses Point where the road heads north into Canada, to follow a different 2 than the one of my departure, heading east and south into the heart of northern Vermont and onto my final destination in the Mountain State’s Northeast Kingdom or NEK, my new home.
Unloading the next day, as the rain that had pursued me mixed intermittently with snow, and the fog and clouds obscured the white ski runs of Jay Peak where over a foot of clean snow would coat its slopes.
What new adventures will I encounter in the coming months and years? Only time will tell.
[Editor's note: We wish Liz all the best in her relocation and look forward to her continued contributions to CityWatch.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
