Day 20 — Dorothy Time, Part I
This motorcycle trip began with a bus ride. I could say it began when I left our home in Thetford Center, Vermont, but Kathy was driving me to the Dartmouth Coach bus stop in Hanover, New Hampshire, and if I’m with her I am home. So the trip didn’t start until we’d stood a few minutes on the sidewalk in light rain, trying not to kiss too ardently and chatting with the other ticketholders.
A young woman had the muddy clothes, huge shabby pack and shiny self-confidence of an al-done Appalachian Trail through-hiker. “You look expeditiony,” I said, by way of sincere compliment.
“You’re looking pretty expeditiony yourself,” she countered, pointing to the two huge dry bags. We all laughed, despite or because of the difference between ending and beginning.
Then the bus was rolling through New Hampshire toward Logan Airport. I was busy for a while, sending while-I’m-gone emails and texting goodbyes. By the time I glanced up to check out the inevitable onboard movie, Dorothy had already run away. She’s in Professor Marvel’s caravan, eyes widening as he conjures her world in his crystal ball: the Gale farm, Uncle Henry and the hired men anxiously searching, Aunt Em sick with worry… Home! She and Toto have to go home! And they run, but the wind is rising, the sky blackens and the twister reaches down for chickens and fenceposts and horses and fields and the farm…
What in God’s name was I doing?
Dorothy had to save Toto from Almira Gulch, the Spinster of Death. I was leaving home for no reason at all: no have-to, no gotta, just an urge to see the continent from one side to another, an urge I was indulging by buying a motorcycle on the far side and riding it home. Not just nonsense, but not-in-the-budget nonsense, time-wasting nonsense, even a bit dangerous nonsense. What would Professor Marvel say?
A week later, way out east in Washington State, the Stone swooped me up into high, wide plains. I’d been ambushed by winds back in the Cascades, where the mountains throw miles-long wind shadows calm as chamomile until you tilt deep into the curve that swings you around to windward and the caffeinated blast slaps the bike upright and points it at guardrail or rockface, depending. But that was wind tag, espresso adrenalin shots. This wind up on the wheatfield plain was uninterrupted, commanding, a presence invisible but certain enough to lean on; I rode at a 10-degree tilt. It dominated a treeless, waterless emptiness stretching to the earth’s curvature.
The first thing I saw between earth and sky was a dust cloud boiling up beyond a low swale. Blue-sky tornado? Then I came up around the swale and saw a tractor at the bottom of the cloud, tossing yellow dirt into the wind, sometimes disappearing in its own storm.
Miles later, I saw another tumultuous cloud, found another tractor raising it, rode more empty miles, saw another cloud, found another tractor.
So I wasn’t ready to close on the next cloud, a handsome yellow funnel dancing furiously beyond the next rise, and find no tractor.
Dust devil.
Wide around as a house, spiraling up in speed and symmetry that made the tractor storms seem incoherent, amateur. A whirling spirit, the natural supernatural.
I was a 21st-century man, piloting a computer-guided internal combustion engine, and I was spooked.
No wonder desert people see devils — or angels — in whirlwinds. God speaks to Job this way. When he sends a whirlwind to Ezekiel, the prophet sees four cherubim, each with four faces — eagle, lion, human and ox — and a vision of divine glory, of wheels within wheels.
We imagine ghosts smashing plates and rapping on walls to embody discarnate passions. Seeing that first dust devil, I couldn’t help thinking, This is the voice of the wind that leveled this plain.
To be continued…
