American Odyssey: A Travelogue

Outward is inward. To venture among the undiscovered and the mysterious is not the realm of textbooks and atlases. It is the realm of the self. Exploration is the staple of the soul. And how better to explore than in the full vigor of nineteen years with a close friend and family member?

My cousin, also age nineteen, and I left from Dallas, Texas in the afternoon of December 19, 2010 for the American Odyssey. For five days and four nights, we plied highways and parkways across the Mississippi River Valley in pursuit of the pursuit: a ribbon of asphalt stretching ahead, the boundless sky smiling down from above and the soft murmurings of childhood behind.

This odyssey, as with Homer's epic work, was about finding home. In ourselves, in the United States, we found more of home than we could possibly imagine. Spanning from universe to heart, the lessons of the observable world melded themselves to our minds in a profound, connective homology. From this, the hearths in our homes burn all the brighter.

Outward is inward. And so we begin. *(All cities have Wikipedia links for further reading.)

Prologue: Dallas
The lesson began close to home. As I-635 bent away from Dallas into Mesquite, my cousin Curran and I struck up a discussion about the management of suburbs. His car gliding under power lines and over never-ending routes to the center of Dallas, I discerned there were three main types of suburbs: an idea that would define our exploration of the U.S., ourselves, and our means of viewing the two together.

(1) Suburbs swallowed up by expansion, indistinguishable from the surrounding city. (2) Suburbs in conflict with growth, struggling to establish independent meaning. (3) Older-stock suburbs, both developed and retaining their enduring identity.

In a reminder of previous blogging on the subject, we stopped in small-town Canton, TX - county seat of Van Zandt County and home of the famous First Monday Trade Days. Here was a town keeping and developing its identity in the face of a changing state.

While having tons of fun on the road trip, sharing stories, blasting music and savoring rest, what would Curran and I see with the interweaving of and struggle for identity?

December 19: Dallas, TX to Natchez, MS
Trips tend to begin with the sunny optimism of opportunity. This road trip was no different. At the Texas-Louisiana border, we admired the grace and hospitality of the Louisiana Welcome Center, soaking up the red brick and white columns of Louisiana architecture. The setting sun glistened off the windows of Downtown Shreveport, LA as we cut southward into the darkening heart of The Pelican State.

Louisiana's strength as a culture was unexpected. From every community and parish there rose a deep sense of commonality. Churches, churches and more churches rose from the roadside. Churches of every size and style, but most especially Catholic. In Louisiana's French and Creole heritage there lies an identity unquestioned and embraced by the whole state.

The cultural verve extended even to the town of Jena, LA, where a heated race-based conflict in years past seemed faint with the placid twinkling of Christmas lights and holiday wreaths stretched across the town square. As Curran and I delved into conversation across moonlit bayous and approached the Mississippi River, we found growing energy and sense of joint potential. The section of the grand El Camino Real on which we traveled reflected our sense of flowering thought.

Vidalia, LA provided the climax of empowerment. On the banks of a quiet Mississippi, Curran and I unearthed a small-town Christmas spectacle: a cross-section of Vidalia cooperating to provide a musical drive through a series of hand-crafted holiday displays. At the Nativity gracing the end of the drive, I felt a shard of meaning and wholeness erupt into my heart. All was well with the world, I thought. This road trip could not be better, right?

As we crossed the Mighty Mississippi and approached Natchez State Park for the night, a deep sense of foreboding overtook us. Abandoned and rotting farm outbuildings, narrow winding roads through the skeletal, overhanging limbs of trees, and the eerie light of a full moon haunted our thoughts until we clambered inside the tent on a freezing Southern night.

More was to come. A false identity imposed on a strong Louisiana culture did not ready us for the complex conflicts of Mississippi faced the next day.

December 20: Natchez, MS to Brentwood, TN
The second day of the road trip developed by discovery of conflict. For this prying through heart and history, Curran and I had the unique perspective of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 440-mile scenic and National Park Service-managed road stretching from Natchez to Nashville. Glimpses of Mississippi passed around us.

Our journey on the Trace revealed three conflicts in the history of Mississippi, each of which involved the arrival of a new culture competing with and marginalizing the old.

First was the tension between Native Americans and European colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries. Best reflected by the fate of the Emerald Mound site, complex indigenous cultures with civic and religious function scattered and collapsed in the face of disease and resulting infighting. In a blasting cold wind, we contemplated the demise of a society living in a flourishing landscape.

Usurping the native Mississippians were French and Spanish explorers and colonists, who established the city of Natchez and used its proximity to the Mississippi River for trading and shipping. Upon the U.S. annexation of the region from Spain, Natchez became the capital of newly-minted Mississippi, and forged a more developed identity, best represented through historic Jefferson College. The river-based economy of the early 19th century created the original Natchez Trace, as tradesmen returning to commercial hubs followed old Indian trails to Nashville.

Driving north on the Trace, however, we moved in tandem with the southwestern expansion of a burgeoning young America. Planters and investors eager for cotton wealth pushed into Mississippi. With less fertile soil than either Alabama or Georgia, the state nonetheless became a bastion of slavery and the cotton trade. Agrarian communities such as Rocky Springs rose amidst the deep woods and bayous, promising opportunity.

Mississippi's new identity as a Dixie stronghold, however, did not survive the 1860s. Erosion from farm mismanagement doomed Rocky Springs, followed by the boll weevil scourge and, of course, the Civil War. Standing in front of Rocky Springs Methodist Church, high over deeply eroded and overgrown fields, I could feel the lines of conflict etched into the earth. The Civil War caught Mississippi in an awkward phase in its development. In Tupelo, MS, we saw a symbolic piece of this phenomenon. The 1864 Battle of Tupelo demoralized Confederate forces attempting to stave off Sherman's March to the Sea from the west, as Union forces seized and held Tupelo against assault.

On the wings of Appomattox, a new conflict emerged in Mississippi, one more familiar in the present, and one Curran and I saw most visibly across the state. Tension between Dixie and the postwar push for national uniformity wreaked havoc on the established order. Defending livelihoods and underlying identity, Mississippians lost their voice in the process of Reconstruction. Shamed and pushed aside, many southern whites turned inward, desperately seeking to reclaim the past.

The weary South continues this conflict today, as Curran and I saw in modern Natchez, MS. The main highway bypasses the old town center, which is isolated from decades of new development by a thick forest - seeming to push in vain against the march of time. Within the forested ring, the past reigns. Old heritages provide identity now, as we saw a colorful collection of Masonic and other secret society insignias around the town. Subtle clues indicate ongoing racial tension, including the politicization of tiny details such as Adopt-A-Highway signs and the use of black or white background fill on signs to indicate constituent ethnicity. The capital of Jackson, MS celebrates its old capitol building and reflects the "white flight" suburbanization model present in other Southern cities, such as Birmingham, AL.

Transcending these conflicts, however, is the Natchez Trace itself. Always using the past as energy for the future, the winding parkway also gave Curran and I rest and beautiful sights in the midst of these conflicts past and present. As we left Mississippi, passed through Alabama and entered Tennessee, Meriwether Lewis Park suggested the promise of new exploration and reconciliation. The beautiful hills of southern Tennessee held promise for the next day.

December 21: Brentwood, TN to St. Louis, MO
Accustomed to the stinging feeling of loss intermixed with the beautiful heritage of Mississippi, Tennessee provided an entirely new taste of social history. Spending the night in a suburb, we took a morning foray into Nashville, TN. Embraced by a cluster of hills surrounding the Cumberland River valley, the state capital felt comfortable with its identity and in harmony with its past.

First was Vanderbilt University, west of downtown. A perfect blend of Northern research university and Southern pride, Vanderbilt stands tall as one of the region's finest institutions. Driven by a major university, the Nashville economy also operates as a business center and transportation hub for the Upper South, with the smokestacks of heavy industry dotting the panorama of the city visible from downtown. More industrial than the Deep South, Nashville upholds this economic and civic synthesis demanded by a state capital.

With race and the Civil War, Nashville emerged stronger into the 20th century than Mississippi on such issues. The downtown War Memorial Plaza focused on conflicts beginning with World War I, and is graced with a quote from Woodrow Wilson, who himself represented a confluence of Southern gentleman and Northern liberal academic as a president and global visionary.

Not yielding to the pressures of forced identity, Nashville reconciles Southern conflict in fascinating ways, including the Centennial Park and a full-size replica of The Parthenon as part of an international exposition in 1897. The state's unique spirit shines through it all, with proud welcoming of country music, the volunteer heritage and the enduring figure of Old Hickory: Andrew Jackson himself.

After Nashville, we headed northwest across the state, first through industrial Clarksville, TN and toward Fort Donelson National Battlefield. At Fort Donelson we saw the coursing resilience of the state symbolically shown in the Civil War. Confederate troops, seeking to prevent the eastward push of Union units under Ulysses S. Grant, constructed forts at strategic points on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Resisting gunboat assault but not ground attack, Confederate forces made a desperate break for Nashville. Their position ultimately futile, the top commanders of the army agreed to surrender to Grant, who demanded the capitulation be "unconditional and immediate."

Leaving Tennessee, we passed through the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, a lush wilderness paralleled by the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. Not spending long in Kentucky, we nonetheless felt a sense of momentum as the rivers flowed on either side, ushering us along with unified direction.

Crossing the Ohio River, we passed into Illinois - Land of Lincoln, and yes, Barack Obama. Now moving from the South to the Midwest, we again drew close to the Mississippi River and the confidence we felt approaching it in Louisiana. Here, as dusk fell, we found communities at ease with their identities, operating much as small towns ought. Carbondale, IL, home of Southern Illinois University and recipient of "All-American City" distinction, and Chester, IL, birthplace of Popeye the Sailor Man, impressed us with their quaint vibrancy.

Reaching St. Louis after dark, we passed the halfway point in our odyssey, beginning to feel just slightly tired of all the traveling. However, the Gateway to the West offered the promise of freedom. After a mishap with hotels, we closed the night well in downtown, a delivery pizza nursing us to the lazy winter break feeling we long wanted.

December 22: St. Louis, MO to Russellville, AR
Freedom is both a blessing and a curse. Pioneers in the American West learned this repeatedly during the heady expansion of the 19th century. St. Louis, MO, with its Gateway Arch opening the rest of the continent to dreams and plans, was a fitting place for our own steps to freedom. Moving from the sheltered comfort of childhood and lack of deep awareness to the vulnerability of adult life, we stood ready to begin the southward turn home.

In Downtown St. Louis, we shivered in the freezing cold to snap pictures of the arch, the old courthouse in which the famous Dred Scott case initially reached a verdict, driving the country to its arduous path toward unity. Leaving the city, we ventured southward into the Ozarks of Southern Missouri, passing through a series of small towns brilliant for their nimble adaptability to circumstance. The hardy Ozarks, represented best through places such as Eminence, MO, moved from logging to mining to farming to tourism and mixes of any of the above to stay alive. This strength serves the region well when other places fail in the face of change.

The beautiful Ozark scenery, with undulating hills, deep forested troughs and dramatic ridges laid bare by the winds of a new winter evolved into the still-more dramatic landscape of Arkansas, our final new state in the odyssey. Arkansas presents an mysterious set of contradictions, and indeed the curse of freedom. Despite the natural beauty apparent all around, towns such as Mammoth Spring, AR along our route and the people in them appeared to lack definition and direction - with a block-like air dispelling crispness and clarity.

Scenic Route 7 through Jasper, AR exemplified this disconnection. Curran and I puzzled at stunning vistas occupied by only the most meager of accommodations. Where was the exulting in the great freedom blessing the region? As we eased into Russellville for the last night of the trip, the need to grasp freedom came into our own lives. With Christmas rapidly approaching, we had our lives to seize, and our own choices to make. The lessons of the trip on identity and experience seemed to crystallize.

December 23: Russellville, AR to Dallas, TX (Home!)
The final leg of the trip did not occur in the separate entity of the road trip we dwelt in for four days. Coming out of the sheath of discovery and immersion, the southern tail of the Ozarks in Ouachita National Forest did not hold the same mystery as the stunning sunset we witnessed the night before. Hot Springs, AR, a prime vacation and retirement destination, passed by rapidly. The true vacation and retirement we sought from a long and productive semester was beyond the road trip: it lay in our homes and families in the tradition-rich time of Christmas.

Zipping down I-30 back toward Dallas, Curran and I again picked up a thread of conversation about the future. Where will we be? Who will we be? The great questions of identity remain, but through the American Odyssey, we perceived the dangers of imposed and competing identity, the blessings of harmonized identities, and the dangers and potential of freedom coming after self-discovery.

Seen in our own lives, and in our means of viewing the world, we aim ever higher entering our adult years, undaunted by surrounding challenges. For we are enveloped by lives of incredible blessing, and sheathed in a country of richness and diversity. All these things and more were discoveries of the trip, and all these things and more will continue to grace the road ahead. We pursued the pursuit, and are more equipped than ever to continue.