Robert Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Blind alley, though. If somone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.

A half hour later the thermometer by the hotel door reads 53 degrees. Inside the empty main dining room of the hotel I find them, looking restless. They seem, by their expressions, to be in a better mood though, and John says optimistically, “I’m going to put on everything I own, and then we’ll make it all right.”

He goes out to the cycles, and when he comes back says, “I sure hate to unpack all that stuff, but I don’t want another ride like that last one.” He says it is freezing in the men’s room, and since there is no one else in the dining room, he crosses behind a table back from where we are sitting, and I am sitting at the table, talking to Sylvia, and then I look over and there is John, all decked out in a full-length set of pale-blue long underwear. He is smirking from ear to ear at how silly he looks. I stare at his glasses lying on the table for a moment and then say to Sylvia:

“You know, just a moment ago we were sitting here talking to Clark Kent — see, there’s his glasses — and now all of a sudden — Lois, do you suppose? — ”

John howls. “CHICKENMAN!”

He glides over the varnished lobby floor like a skater, does a handspring, then glides back. He raises one arm over his head and then crouches as if starting for the sky. “I’m ready, here I go!” He shakes his head sadly. “Jeez, I hate to bust through that nice ceiling, but my X-ray vision tells me somebody’s in trouble.” Chris is giggling.

“We’ll all be in trouble if you don’t get some clothes on”, Sylvia says.

John laughs. “An exposer, hey? ‘The Ellendale revealer!’ ” He struts around some more, then begins to put his clothes on over the underwear. He says, “Oh no, oh no, they wouldn’t do that. Chickenman and the police have an understanding. They know who’s on the side of law and order and justice and decency and fair play for everyone.”

When we hit the highway again it is still chilly, but not like it was. We pass through a number of towns and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the sun warms us up, and my feelings warm up with it. The tired feeling wears off completely and the wind and sun feel good now, making it real. It’s happening, just from the warming of the sun, the road and green prairie farmland and buffeting wind coming together. And soon it is nothing but beautiful warmth and wind and speed and sun down the empty road. The last chills of the morning are thawed by the warm air. Wind and more sun and more smooth road.

So green this summer and so fresh.

There are white and gold daisies among the grass in front of an old wire fence, a meadow with some cows and far in the distance a low rising of the land with something golden on it. Hard to know what it is. No need to know.

Where there is a slight rise in the road the drone of the motor becomes heavier. We top the rise, see a new spread of land before us, the road descends and the drone of the engine falls away again. Prairie. Tranquil and detached.

Later, when we stop, Sylvia has tears in her eyes from the wind, and she stretches out her arms and says, “It’s so beautiful. It’s so empty.”

I show Chris how to spread his jacket on the ground and use an extra shirt for a pillow. He is not at all sleepy but I tell him to lie down anyway, he’ll need the rest. I open up my own jacket to soak up more heat. John gets his camera out.

After a while he says, “This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the ground glass and it’s just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it’s gone.”

I say, “That’s what you don’t see in a car, I suppose.”

Sylvia says, “Once when I was about ten we stopped like this by the road and I used half a roll of film taking pictures. And when the pictures came back I cried. There wasn’t anything there.”

“When are we going to get going?” Chris says.

“What’s your hurry?” I ask.

“I just want to get going.”

“There’s nothing up ahead that’s any better than it is right here.”

He looks down silently with a frown. “Are we going to go camping tonight?” he asks. The Sutherlands look at me apprehensively.

“Are we?” he repeats.

“We’ll see later”, I say.

“Why later?”

“Because I don’t know now.”

“Why don’t you know now?”

“Well, I just don’t know now why I just don’t know.”

John shrugs that it’s okay.

“This isn’t the best camping country”, I say. “There’s no cover and no water.” But suddenly I add, “All right, tonight we’ll camp out.” We had talked about it before.

So we move down the empty road. I don’t want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road.

The flatness of the prairie disappears and a deep undulation of the earth begins. Fences are rarer, and the greenness has become paler — all signs that we approach the High Plains.

We stop for gas at Hague and ask if there is any way to get across the Missouri between Bismarck and Mobridge. The attendant doesn’t know of any. It is hot now, and John and Sylvia go somewhere to get their long underwear off. The motorcycle gets a change of oil and chain lubrication. Chris watches everything I do but with some impatience. Not a good sign.

“My eyes hurt”, he says.

“From what?”

“From the wind.”

“We’ll look for some goggles.”

All of us go in a shop for coffee and rolls. Everything is different except one another, so we look around rather than talk, catching fragments of conversation among people who seem to know each other and are glancing at us because we’re new. Afterward, down the street, I find a thermometer for storage in the saddlebags and some plastic goggles for Chris.

The hardware man doesn’t know any short route across the Missouri either. John and I study the map. I had hoped we might find an unofficial ferryboat crossing or footbridge or something in the ninety-mile stretch, but evidently there isn’t any because there’s not much to get to on the other side. It’s all Indian reservation. We decide to head south to Mobridge and cross there.

The road south is awful. Choppy, narrow, bumpy concrete with a bad head wind, going into the sun and big semis going the other way. These roller-coaster hills speed them up on the down side and slow them up on the up side and prevent our seeing very far ahead, making passing nervewracking. The first one gave me a scare because I wasn’t ready for it. Now I hold tight and brace for them. No danger. Just a shock wave that hits you. It is hotter and dryer.

At Herreid John disappears for a drink while Sylvia and Chris and I find some shade in a park and try to rest. It isn’t restful. A change has taken place and I don’t know quite what it is. The streets of this town are broad, much broader than they need be, and there is a pallor of dust in the air. Empty lots here and there between the buildings have weeds growing in them. The sheet metal equipment sheds and water tower are like those of previous towns but more spread out. Everything is more run-down and mechanical-looking, and sort of randomly located. Gradually I see what it is. Nobody is concerned anymore about tidily conserving space. The land isn’t valuable anymore. We are in a Western town.

We have lunch of hamburgers and malteds at an A W place in Mobridge, cruise down a heavily trafficked main street and then there it is, at the bottom of the hill, the Missouri. All that moving water is strange, banked by grass hills that hardly get any water at all. I turn around and glance at Chris but he doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in it.