And this problem was repeated throughout the six weeks we were in the States. In motel rooms, in machines on the street in the torrential summer rain, it was the wrong card, the card had run out, the phone simply would not take cards. In a country where we were moving on often every night, and needed to sort out the accommodation further down the line, it was a major preoccupation.
Email was my concession to contact with the outside world. I had not wanted to be in touch with people elsewhere; I wanted to be in the current country, mind, body and soul. But email gradually took me over: for arrangements further ahead; ensuring that the people we wanted to see would be available; dealing with paperwork such as the booking for the Trans-Siberian Express. It also meant we were in touch with our friends and relations back home, which was a heartwarming affirmation, but also a reminder of worlds I was trying to leave behind.
Everywhere we went, even in small towns in far-flung places, we ensconced ourselves in the local internet café for half an hour or so and caught up. But in the States where. computers are so widely found in people’s homes, there were barely any internet cafes to be found. We did find, both in the USA and Canada, that we could usually use them in a local library.
As we turned north at Los Angeles, the air suddenly became cool – a wonderful relief after the intense heat. But all the magnificent scenery was out there, and I was still, after five weeks, in a car. As we wended our way up the dramatic coastal route from Los Angeles through Big Sur, I yearned for tranquillity, camping in a local site by the river, swimming in the glorious sunshine.
On September 1st we were stuck in Labor Day weekend traffic. Hoping for wilderness, but nervous at the possible illegality of sleeping wild in this tourist area, all we could get into was the Redwoods Resort and campsite. The name summed it up. Lovely redwoods, but a resort, noisy, choc-a-bloc. We stayed in a cabin and wished we had had the courage of our convictions and slept down by the river where it was quiet and beautiful.
We did have two final nights in the wild before we left. The first time was in Oregon, in a lay-by beside a creek that we found in the dark. The heat was sticky in our arctic sleeping bags; our sleep punctuated by the honking of geese over the water. We were woken in the middle of the night by blue lights flashing in our lay-by; the police had turned up. It was a false alarm, as it turned out, for they had come to talk to another driver, but I felt vulnerable, naked in my sleeping bag, lying on the ground.
Our last night in the States was more peaceful. On the slopes of Mount Olympia, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca that divides the States from Canada, was a campsite high up in the pine forests. Reassured by the metal bear-proof boxes supplied to store our food, we slept on the ground among trees so tall and thick that we could not see the stars. It rained in the night but I did not wake.
Respect the wide diversity among us in our lives and relationships. Refrain from making prejudiced judgments about the life journeys of others… Remember that each of us is unique, precious, a child of God.
(Advices and Queries, 22)
Although evangelical Quakers predominate on the West Coast of the States, we had gone to some trouble to dig out unprogrammed Friends, who were usually isolated in small groups. At Santa Fé Meeting, we had met Jane and Bill, who were visitors from Riverside, California and had invited us to stay with them when we got there. When we arrived, they were about to go out, and generously left us with the run of their comfortable condominium and their balcony with cat, dog and turtle. Both artists, their work covered the walls. The next day Jane showed me her writing, and we talked of mysticism and animals, and particularly of crows, which have for Jane a particular fascination. At night she went for a jog – her way of finding solitude – but Bill had to stay in the car not too far away to make sure she was safe.
Jane and Bill in turn had rung Friends in Los Osos who also put us up for a night. They were a delightful elderly couple: she a retired schoolteacher, he an artist with few words but a mischievous sense of humour, much expressed in his art. Such generosity to strangers. They lived near a little bay, which we explored after supper. It was intimate, very pretty in the evening light, full of modest canoes upturned on the shore, light years away from the ostentatious craft we had seen elsewhere. And there was no need to lock them up.
We had also taken a diversion to meet Jeanne in Florence, Oregon. She is part of a worship group that meets twice a month, but the other three members were away. We shared a Meeting for Worship and lunch, before her spell of duty at a second-hand book stall at a charity fair. Earlier we had had a delightful random encounter, with a fish buyer, sitting at his ease in the harbour as we walked down in the early morning, and ate our breakfast on the quay. He had lived there, man and mischievous boy, with a brief spell in the navy. He was a warm, storytelling man, comfortable in his life, with lots of free fish, his only sadness a wife who didn’t like to travel. A rooted countryman with an enviable peace of mind.
After all these liberal Friends, it was more of a challenge to come upon George Fox University. Seeing a signpost bearing the name of the founder of Quakerism, we couldn’t wait to see it the next morning, and found we were in time for one of the bi-weekly tours of the campus. We heard from our guide, an enthusiastic young woman for whom everything was “awesome”, that, as in Quaker schools in the UK, only a minority of the students are Quakers. The facilities were excellent; the student/teacher ratio admirably low; frequent attendance at chapel compulsory. As we entered the large hall in a stream of students, we saw their IDs being scanned to give them their “spiritual formation credits”. The service included a talk by one of the staff about integrity:
“Too many people here are having their IDs scanned, and then going out the side door. That is simply not acceptable … Now I know that some of you do not want to be here, and that’s fine.”
This address was followed by the singing of catchy rock numbers, some singing along with enthusiasm, punching the air, others mumbling the words. A young man on the campus later confirmed that you could get exemption from attendance.
“What for?”
“Clash of schedule.”
“Not clash of faith?”
“No.”
Some years ago Alistair Cooke said that he had never managed to find “the real America”; perhaps it was naïve to imagine that we could. When he asked where it was, people would wave their arm and vaguely indicate that he should keep going west – well, we had gone as far west as it was possible to go.
Perhaps Steinbeck got it right. The humour, the irony, the warmth of affection with which he describes Cannery Row and its community make them glow. Doc, the character based on the founder of the Aquarium in Monterey, speaks for a real America when he talks of walking through several States “because he loved true things … because he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country.” He also spoke for us and the purpose of our visit to the States, however little we achieved it.
Chapter 6
Home from Home
“Friendship is an equality made of harmony,” said the Pythagoreans. Friendship has something universal about it. It consists of loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race.
Simone Weil
British Columbia is beautiful, with some of the friendliest people in the world. Vancouver Island, in particular, is like a cleaned-up England, with pure air, clean streets, a pro-British culture and lovely landscapes reminiscent of Kent or Devon. In a strange way it conforms to the view of England that many people abroad have. Wherever we went, people talked of tea and cricket on village greens. All of which exists, of course, but has nothing to do with the London that we inhabit. When asked about English customs, our habitual response was that there are no widespread habits any more; everywhere is different – there is freedom and variety. We would describe with enthusiasm the richness of life in London: the cultural div
ersity, the arts, the lively social scene. As an English Quaker who lectures in contemporary British culture in St Petersburg said, the view the Russians have of England is of a nineteenth-century pastoral idyll. In a sense that is what we found in Canada and New Zealand, and is what attracts the English there in droves.
In northern British Columbia I wrote:
Strange how Canada does not affect me. I have never been attracted to it and my response now that I am here is much the same. It’s pretty but not affecting. When we walk in the woods, as today, they are gracious, spacious, but dead, silent. Not a bird sings. We saw a squirrel and bear droppings but no other sign. And there is no view, save trees on every side.
But we were there for good reasons, even if not my own. Stephen’s wish to visit his relations and revisit the places of his childhood in British Columbia was an important one, and one to be taken seriously. So I tried to make the most of being there and struggle to realise the spiritual content of everyday life. In general the morning (menopausal?) miseries at not living the life I wanted to lead dissolved into some degree of acceptance. My rewards were frequent significant encounters and a few powerful new connections.
Before we left England, I mentioned my impending trip to a colleague at Quaker Social Action. She said: “Oh, you must meet my mother; she’s involved in similar work to you, with Native Canadian women.” I was thrilled to hear of a project that I might get involved with, and the possibility of getting to talk to Native Canadians, and contacted Susan, who wrote back with typical generosity: “I would love you to help with my project. Come and stay.”
Susan and John live in a fine wooden house in the woods near Sidney on Vancouver Island. John does research on ice floes; Susan works in the community. By the time we arrived, though, some six months after our initial contact, her work had moved on, and she was no longer involved with Native Canadians on a day-to-day basis. She was, however, ready for a new challenge. When I talked about microcredit and its successful application in developed countries, she jumped at the idea and knew at once which groups in the community she wanted to involve: NGOs working with native Canadians, former prostitutes, new immigrants and single parents. She and I roughed out a proposal overnight and took it to one of the groups locally, who greeted it with enthusiasm. I wasn’t around long enough to take the matter further but she has done so, and a few months later emailed me to tell me that they had a committee in place, and a funding application underway.
Stephen and I stayed for ten days and settled into an idyllic way of life. He was as happy as a sandboy in the beloved Vancouver Island of his childhood, gardening, discovering that he likes dogs after all and walking them every morning and – less pleasantly – trying to sell the car. We both unwound, I literally too after five weeks coiled up in the car, as we took long walks and were more physically active round the house and the pretty, if principally retirement, little town. I caught up with practicalities too, getting my hair cut, films developed, spending time in the library emailing. One evening, I spent a couple of hours helping Susan take lavender off its stalks to make bags. A peaceful and traditionally female occupation.
But the richness of our time there lay for me in the friendship we built up. Susan and I clicked straight away and were able to share confidences to a degree remarkable after such a short acquaintance. I felt supported to spend time with a woman so like me, to talk of menopause, relationships, aspirations: social, spiritual and personal. It made up for what I was missing from my friendships at home, made me feel more grounded. I felt sure that this was a friendship that would endure.
In Victoria we stayed with Stephen’s relations. His aunt, Lisl, an Austrian dancer who had been rescued from Vienna by her English husband in the late 1930s, was a volunteer at a shop called Global Village, which sold goods from third-world countries. To our delight we found there the coffee from the Sandanistan farm in Omatepe, Nicaragua, where we had stayed. Such connections condensed the world; affirmed a form of globalisation that was beneficent. Outlets like Global Village are crucial for co-operatives and small business in third world countries which depend on making a living in a market broader than their own poor community
Lisl was also a volunteer at the splendid Royal British Columbia Museum. The Native Canadian section gave us more insight into Native North American culture than we had been able to glean from our contacts in the States. There was an audio-visual display of animals with voices over which gave me a greater understanding of animism; of their belief in the connection between man and the animal world, a belief that was growing strongly in me.
We then headed up the island to visit Courtney/Comox, to where Stephen had been evacuated as a child – the main reason for our being in Canada. We travelled on a slow pottering train. It was a lovely journey up the coast, with pine trees and the occasional glimpse of the water in between. Looking out of the back of the train at the receding tracks was reminiscent of my own childhood journeys, and as Stephen larked about in an empty carriage, one could well believe that the last time he had been here was when he was seven. We visited Norah, now 92, the woman who had brought him to British Columbia, and whom he had not seen since. We canoed on the sea at Kye Bay, where he had spent many happy holidays and visited the grand house in the grounds of which he had lived, and which was now being restored.
It was on Vancouver Island that we said goodbye to our car. We had bought a mobile phone so that would-be purchasers could contact us, and after a number of newspaper advertisements, we finally sold it for what we had paid for it. Stephen was sad to hand it over and not happy at the prospect of being once again in backpacking mode. I was relieved at having sold the car and that we were handing it on in good order; also, predictably, glad to be without a car, back on the road.
There was one more important encounter before we left the country. We had decided to delay our flight to Hawaii in order to visit Stephen’s cousin, Marion, who lives in some isolation with her husband Jim, in Houston, a community in the pine woods of northern British Columbia. It took us three days by boat and bus to get to this most northerly part of our journey so far, and we were, it turned out, the first of the family to go there. Marion and Stephen, who were evacuated together, had a great deal to talk about on family matters, and spent a good deal of time poring over photos.
I felt a strong affinity with this spiritual cousin, a Quaker in all but name. As I helped her prepare lunch at a local high school, Marion and I chatted about our shared love of spiritual books, and also about her own writing. It was also rather fun serving the children at lunchtime; Marion and an assistant worked at the speed of lightning, collecting in money and handing out pizzas, hot dogs, tacos and ice cream. Stephen and I also spent an evening with Jim, a pastor of the United Church, at his Bible class. The subject was the Beatitudes: a passage of the Bible to which I feel close, but sadly that evening was largely about organisational matters. I did admire Jim in his approach to property, and I shared his abhorrence of churches that hold on to money. Inheriting a silver teaset, he had immediately given it away: “What would I need with a silver teaset?” “If I take in a hitchhiker, and he steals my camera from the back seat, I feel it is my fault for leaving it there.”
Chapter 7
The 9/II Factor
Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.
Gandhi
It was of course the year of September 11th.
In the six months before those attacks, we had ample proof of the preoccupation with America that is wrestled with by most of the rest of the world. In Rio, we got into conversation with an elderly man at the next table in a restaurant – he turned out to be a judge. After a little while he burst out: “Why do the British always hang on to the coat tails of the United States?” We could not answer; knew that it was all too true, particularly in the bombing of Iraq against which we had held a silent vigil in London
some years before.
One cannot travel through Central America without being aware of the overwhelming influence of the USA. The history of involvement with corrupt regimes is too recent, too fresh. And in many places the local currency is disregarded in favour of the mighty US dollar.
In the steamy colonial town of Leon, Nicaragua, we came across a Sandanista rally, full of young people dancing on the stage, but also attended by the old faithful, one of whom asked me,
“What do you think of America?”
It was impossible to answer. I think all sorts of things about America.
But when pressed, I said, “I think America is good at democracy in its own country, not so good at it in other countries.”
A simplistic response, but one which went down well.
And in the capital, Managua, where we stayed at a Quaker guest house one Saturday night, hoping to find a Meeting for Worship the following morning, we had come across a group of American students who knew nothing of Quakerism. When Stephen asked the leader of the group if he was a Quaker, he replied “No, I am an American”!
In Honduras we met a young American teaching history. I could not imagine what kind of history an American might be teaching in Honduras …
We were in the United States itself, in August. One of the reasons for wanting to drive right across the States was to get a feel for the whole country, for the hugeness of it, and for a sense of Middle America. Like many English people, I have friends in New York and on the West Coast, hardly typical of the Republican majority. I wanted to understand where it was that their foreign policy came from. During those five weeks, driving mainly on the highways, and avoiding the impersonal overlandscaped interstates, we certainly had a real taste of that enormous, varied and beautiful country, and its intensely friendly people. People in the car park, the shopping mall, at the motel, everyone took an interest. Seeing our florida plates, they asked us about florida, then hearing that we were from further afield, they were fascinated by our travels, immensely helpful – all over, in Oklahoma, in New Mexico, Arizona, in Texas. And in the deep South.
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