There are two things that are really exciting to look forward to when leaving for a trip across and around the United States. The first is the barbecue. From what I’m told its history goes back to the Mesoamericans. They had these things they called ‘barbacoa’ which were the wooden frames that they’d use to either sleep on, elevated from off of the ground, or build a fire under and smoke their meats on hoping not to confuse the two.
For me it is a supremely American thing that, while reaching back to hold hands with the past, doesn’t make you want to hang your head and cry. It is one of the last dialectical things in the south as well. Let’s face it, the southern accent is dying. It’s still around but not as prevalent anymore. I had to lose my accent when my family moved north as per my father’s request as he was afraid no one would take me seriously. So for barbecue to still have regional foundations in both historicity and variation in recipe and method according to the region it seems like one of the last markers of where people have been and what they do there.
I’m looking forward to all many kinds. Brined chicken in Georgia, tangy Nashville style, the hearty Kansas City barbecue, smokey Texas barbecue as well as the crazy-delicious things the Mississippi Delta people do to their food will all be delighting each of us in the van.
The other thing to look forward to is the weather. That’s not to limit things to whether it rains or not; the scale and scope of the continent can be felt with each change in elevation (we’ll go from below sea level to 10,000 feet above), in the vastness and variety of the flora and fauna (we have every kind of climate except permafrost-y tundra…and yes we have rain forest, just not tropical rain forest) and also in the ‘raining or not’ way as well. Because let’s face it, going across the great plains to the mountains, to the forests, to the desert for a month you’re going to see some strange things fall from the sky.
It’s always the weather; it seems it is never the time driving that really makes one appreciate how vast our country is as a land mass. Several times people have gone to sleep in the back of the van in a flat region of the country only to wake up ascending the peaks of some mountain. It is baffling.
I think it should be mandatory (perhaps in cultural expectation and not in legislation) for everyone to make some manner of cross-country trip at least once in their life. Heck, I bet if we had better and cheaper trains, folks would traverse the country biennially. Perhaps then we’d not think of ourselves as so different and separate in the bad, dissociative way, and more in the way one appreciates the wonder and diversity of the natural world.
Yay, yay, USA. [a more adept computer user would put a computer-y way to play 'California Girls' by The Beach Boys]
