On the Way to Somewhere Else

I live on Federal Highway 20, more or less, and I’ve lived near it before. It goes from Boston across America to Newport OR. I’ve experienced pretty much the full extent of it in my traveling years. If you look it up, Wikipedia will tell the story West to East, through Oregon, Idaho, Montana. But the real history is, coming from the East, it stopped at Yellowstone Park in Wyoming and only years later added the Western extent. The highway number stops through the park, but we all know.

It's the longest highway in America, I’m told. From Newport OR, if you turn East you see this sign, “3365 miles to Boston.” I lived near that end, in Eugene, for some years. Now from my home in MA going West, along with other impatient travelers, I would choose to take Interstate 90 - Mass Turnpike, New York Throughway - and follow those big fast roads. You only need to get off a little to find Rt 20 somewhere nearby. Pennsylvania into Ohio, we go by Oberlin College, where I taught Winter Terms for years, Toledo and Sylvania, where my good friends Steve and Lynn live. There’s Gary and South Bend IN, and through the South side of Chicago and Rockford (hi to Dave Stocker). Then Dubuque to Sioux City IA, but that’s enough, you get the idea.

These Federal Highways preceded the Interstates by some decades. In the 1920s, when we first felt the liberation of the automobile, so much more capable of conquering the world (that had belonged to someone else) than the covered wagons. This system of numbered highways gave one the impression you could just start, and you’d get there.

Federal highways started with low numbers in the North and East, odd numbers North and South, Rt. 1 Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida. And the even numbers are for East West - Rt. 2 in Houlton Maine West over to Everett WA, jumping over the great lakes from New York to Michigan. Rt. 101, for some reason exceeding the rule of numbers under 100, loops around the Olympic Peninsula in WA then takes you down the West coast through the Redwoods and to Los Angeles. Why not San Diego? I don’t know. Rt. 99, which you would think should be the highest, has been largely “decommissioned” (that’s what they call it) and replaced by Interstate 5.

The Interstate Highways follow the opposite system, with the low numbers in the West and South, and we have no Interstates in the 50s and 60s to avoid confusion in the middle. No Interstate 1, for that matter. Perhaps they’re saving it to replace the 101. In the West folks say “the 101, or “take the 405.” In the East no one would use “the” before “95.” And no one in Massachusetts or New York says, “take the 90,” it’s “the Turnpike,” or “the Throughway.”

Unlike the interstates, built anew, the Federal Highways were roads that already existed from town to town, some with their own names. The cow paths, Native American trails, routes of commerce and community evolving now with bypasses - a lot of thought went into all that. But it seems to me, something happens when you gather all these lanes, pikes, avenues and thoroughfares into one numbered artery; what were once destinations in themselves, now become on the way to somewhere else.

I’m driving at nearly the East end of Rt 20 in the suburban Boston town of Wayland, and with a big truck right my tail I pass a dark being on the side of the road. I manage to turn around as soon as I can and go back, putting on the car flashers, to meet a giant snapping turtle. Neck extended to judge the relative size of the steel beasts roaring by, he hesitates, maybe gets it that he’s out of his league. But usually the biggest and nastiest around, he’s over the white line into the road. I have only my windshield ice scraper brush to try to turn him around. He is ferociously mad at me, glaring and snapping. I have pulled one by the tail before, though I know animal lovers say not to.

A woman pulls up, and as I probably should have done, says we should call the police. She does. She has gloves and intends to pick him up. I warn her his back claws can still get her, one attempt and she gives up. Soon a young officer arrives, and I haven’t gotten this turtle to go far. The policeman has a tool, a long stick with a noose that can tighten. It’s probably more efficient with stray dogs, but with it around the shell he manages to get the turtle a few feet off the road before the thing comes off.

There’s no reasoning with him (the turtle) that this side is where the wetlands are and the other side is a toxic landfill. But now he’s over in the grass. They leave and so do I. After my human errand at the bank, on the way back I look for him, and he’s gone.

All this local excitement, in the context of a June 14 military parade for the Occupant, and hundreds of “No Kings” Rallies held all across our country - I don’t want to talk about that.

But this all too familiar power differential in human politics again has distracted us, me anyway, from the long inequality with our fellow beings in this river town. My son Lou pointed out to me the other night, a pedestrian beaver crossing at the intersection of Routes 20 and 27 by the Unitarian Church. We’ve colonized their world. They appear not to have noticed and go on.

Leaving the supermarket, I see a little bird caught in something, trying to get off the ground. (I don’t know what kind of bird, I probably should, but it’s brown). I see it’s caught by a string somehow stuck in the dirt and fluttering small frantic loops as far as this tether will allow. I of course will rescue it, but my ego has my first thought being to take a picture. My phone dies.

I realize it’s dental floss, waxed. It’s wound around a wing and around the little thing’s neck. I lift it up, floss comes unstuck from the ground. I hold the bird in my cupped hand and try to figure out how it has gotten so tangled, it’s struggled for some time to get this way. I get the first part out, talking to the bird. It doesn’t try to peck or claw me. It has surrendered to my big hand and looks at me asking “Should I die of a heart attack before you eat me?” I touch its head with what I think is a gesture of compassion.

This is a relatively new shopping center, built where a farm and maybe wetlands had been, now the intersections of several Disneyland streets, restaurants, exercise studios, pet store, hardware store and of course, dentist office.

A guy shows up, asks “What was that?” I show him the situation, he says “I think I have some scissors,” heads for his car. I’m wondering what I have in mine. I sit down in my driver’s seat, door open, I first plug in my phone. (I know, I know). I pull out a bit from around its neck and many little feathers come too. I can only see that it’s really buried. The guy comes back with nail clippers, “I can cut it with this.”

I want to argue that loosing what little there is to hold on to could make it impossible to get the rest from the neck. He cuts it. And that was all that was holding the bird. The rest still tight on its neck it twists, flutters and flies out the door into the sky. It will either survive or die and become food for some other wild thing.

My phone has come on, I didn’t get a picture.