Alexandersmap

    Month: October 2019

    • The Road Less Travelled: Route 20

      Route 20 runs from the Atlantic Ocean to within a mile of the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. I’ve been on various sections of this route over the years, but my favorite stretch may just be in Upstate New York. The highway snakes along rolling hills, dipping into valleys and small towns along the way. Stunningly beautiful in places, sadly distressed poverty in others, but always interesting.

      In autumn the views can be breathtaking, but it’s always good to remember you’re zipping along at highway speeds with nothing to keep you from a terminal velocity head-in crash but a double yellow line. 55 plus 55 is a bad equation for traveling souls. Yeah… Right lane travel is preferable. It’s not like the roads are jammed out here. Go to Charlton, Massachusetts and you’ll see many white crosses on Route 20 marking tragic endings to road trips. Less so here, not because the road doesn’t present the same risk, but because there simply aren’t as many cars. Another reason to prefer this stretch of this long road.

      Highways cross-cross the landscape, transforming the communities they pass through in the process. Some communities win, some lose; It’s all depends on how you look at it. Fuel the economy or retain the character of your small town? Choices… Route 20 was once the major east-west route across the northern tier of the United States, until the parallel, more efficient I-90 diverted traffic. There’s a lot to be said for a steady speed limit ride across long distances, and I-90, for a price, offers efficient high speed. But you lose the local flavor of the land. Driving will never give you everything, but it gives you more the more you slow down. Slowing down (at least a little) gets more interesting to me as I get older.

    • Sustained Attention

      I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast interview of Ken Burns during a long drive to New York This morning, and pulled out some gems. I strongly recommend this interview if you’re a creative type, history buff or, well, human. Two quotes in particular jumped out at me:

      “All real meaning accrue[s] in duration… that the work we’re proudest of… that the relationships you care the most about have benefited from sustained attention.” – Ken Burns

      Great work takes sustained effort. Being in it for the long haul matters. Creating meaningful long form content in a sound bite world matters. So do the work that matters the most and grow your audience both organically and incrementally. Nothing meaningful is created easily.

      “Wake the dead.” – Ken Burns (quoting words his father-in-law said to him)

      This phrase jolted me, as I think I’m doing that on s much (much) smaller scale than Burns. Stories bring the dead back to life, and gives the writer a bit of immortality too (paraphrasing Burns again there). In highlighting the lives of others we’re also highlighting something of ourselves.

    • Time Travel on the Rail Trail

      I took a walk on a local rail trail during a lunch break.  The trail brought solitude occasionally interrupted by fellow walkers, joggers and cyclists. But not really solitude.  There were glimpses of frogs warily looking back at me, chirps of chipmunks announcing “here’s another one.” as I walked by, and a distant hum of traffic in the distance.  But I was alone with my thoughts.  After cutting way back on listening to podcasts and music on most walks and rows, I’ve realized a net benefit in improved creativity.  Everyone has their thing, mine is quiet.

      An acorn stood in the middle of the path, shed of its cap and firmly on its fat end seeking perhaps a bare foot.  But likely hoping for a kick to the grass where it might take root. Asphalt is no place for an acorn with aspirations.  The remains of hundreds of its kin lay massacred on the trail, victims of bicycle tires and shoes alike.  Looking back, I regret not kicking that acorn into the grass.  It might have stood a fighting chance.

      I paused at a wall, built of granite by hand. Dimpled from the stone cutter, lichen and moss-covered from a long watch under a canopy of oak and maple trees.  The wall has stood here for at least 170 years, and aside from a crack or two looks like it could stand for three times that.  If a generation is 30 years, the man that built this wall could well have been my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather.  I wonder if he thought of that when placing these stones?  Turning back the way I came, I thought the wall could easily stand for another ten generations if left to itself.  Perhaps they’ll stand where I stood today, thinking as I do of those who came before and those who belong to the future.  My moment with the wall was just a glimpse of a time machine passing from then to there, with a brief visit with me along the way.

      That acorn is a time machine as well, waiting to find the right landing place to take root and grow.  It too could outlive all of us.  And a part of me hopes that it does.