Southern Graces

"We got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure warm waters. 'We're in the South! We've left the winter!' Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, Mobile-bound. So were we." - On The Road.

Well, it's taken a bit of a while, but we made it here at last to New Orleans, and in the car we were supposed to be in all along. I've not updated the blog for a few days, so you may have been wondering what happened to us and whether we'd disappeared off the face of the earth, which given the content of these past few days would have been perfectly possible. Part of the reason for being incommunicado is that we have been holed up in a monastery in Kentucky and then because I was on the road almost constantly for 60 hours straight driving to Toronto and back to get the car, and then on down to New Orleans.

But to back up before all that, our second day in Memphis we spent once more with Elvis, first at Graceland and then down in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he was born. Two more places of pilgrimage where people come from all over the world to connect in some way - stand where he stood, see what he saw, breath the air he breathed - in this case Elvis, but it's the same with Jack Kerouac in Lowell etc., Billie Holiday in Baltimore, Thomas Merton in Gethsemani and even Barak Obama in Washington. Connecting with human experience, bringing life to words and stories.

From Memphis we headed back up to Kentucky on Monday where we were booked in for a three-day retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani where Thomas Merton was a monk. On the first evening, the Guestmaster, Father Damian, said that that we might think we were there because we had chosen to go there but that was not the case. We were there, he said, because God wanted us there in this unique place, and because he had a purpose in calling us there. Each of us had been given a special grace by God to be in this place at this time. That's the sort of thing such people probably say in every monastery and retreat centre in the world - you're there because God wants you there and because he wants to speak to you, do something in your life etc. And it's all well and good, but I was sitting there thinking I guess that means if I have to drive to Toronto, God doesn't want me here at this time, but instead he wants me on the road, and he has special grace for me there also. And so it proved.

The next morning, while I was languishing in pools of uncertainty, wondering when I was going to hear about the car in Toronto, and whether I going to have make the drive from here, or whether we'd get all the way to San Francisco before having to drive across the country again to return the rental car and pick up my car in Toronto - while I was going through all the possibilities and permutations, best case/worst case scenarios and all scenarios in between, my cellphone rang (which was not even supposed to be turned on in the monastery) and I was given the happy news that my Ford Escape had been safely delivered off the train in Toronto and was ready for pick-up. Alleluia! Finally. So I hastily made plans to leave Tuesday night after supper and drive through the night, sleeping if necessary at rest stops along the way, arrive early in the morning, pick-up the car, turn around and make the return trip arriving back at the monastery on Wednesday evening for a good night's sleep before heading off for New Orleans on Thursday morning.

That would have all been fine except for one thing: the biggest ice-storm and snow storm was brewing to hit mid-eastern States and Canada that very night. Little did I know. Special grace.


Had I known I probably would have set off straight away and then I would not have got to play with the micro-photography feature on my new camera and I would not have got to see Merton's hermitage again.





So I left as planned a little before 7pm on Tuesday evening. We agreed that I would make this trip solo as Sean had not been to Gethsemani before, and it was a major reason for him even making this trip. Almost straightaway the flavour of the night became apparent in the form of a tree that had come down across the road just a couple of miles from the monastery. All afternoon it had been raining and the water had been instantly freezing, coating trees, cars, everything with a thickening layer of ice. Great opportunities for micro-photography but all afternoon, as we walked in the monastery grounds, we saw and heard limbs of trees crashing to the ground with the weight of excess water they had accumulated. So a tree across the road was not really unexpected. I turned around and took a detour, another tree across the road; this time they were well on the way to dismembering it with chainsaws, and after 10 minutes I was on my way again. Took nearly two hours just to get to Louisville (about 50 miles away). It was going to be a long night. Already I'd seen cars that had spun-off the highway into the snow (it had begun snowing as the temperature dropped further) at the side of the road and in the central reservation.

On up to Cinncinati, heading north through Ohio and Michigan, retracing our journey of last Friday night, to cross the border at Detroit into Windsor, Ontario and up the 401 to Toronto. The weather and the road conditions grew worse, as did the driving of some individuals, many of whom paid for it with skids, rollovers and serious crashes that I passed maybe just moments after they'd happened. Skidded once myself for no apparent reason but kept the power on and pulled through; another time I was enveloped by water from passing trucks on both sides so that I could not see where I was going - very scary to be moving along a highway with trucks on either side and not being able to see, and not wanting to touch the brakes in case of triggering a skid.... I was acutely aware of the danger now, in a way that I wasn't when I set out, but I determined to carry on with extreme caution, which of course meant low speed, which meant a longer journey. Accompanied along the way with music from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington amongst others and I listened to the entire audiobook of Jack Kerouac's Wake-Up! A Life of the Buddha - though I must confess that attention to the road meant that I didn't listen as closely as I'd have liked, but instead drifted in and out.

Got to Detroit at about 5am on Wednesday morning but then got sent on some unnecessary detour, missed my turning for Canada, and ended up getting stuck in rush hour traffic further delaying me for a couple of hours, before finally crossing the border and getting onto the 401 bound for Toronto (see left).

As I approached the metropolis the traffic got heavier and the driving got worse, especially amongst the trucker community - I saw the aftermath of numerous altercations between trucks and cars, and at one point everything ground to a halt as an articulated tractor-trailer had "jack-knifed" and lay blocking about four out of five lanes. Finally, got to Toronto airport at about 3pm to drop off the rental vehicle which by now was completely shrink-wrapped in ice (see below).

Then picked-up my car, gassed-up and headed out on the highway again into the rush hour traffic heading south from Toronto on the QEW for Niagara Falls, determined (like the wise men) to take a different route home - slightly longer but would get me south quicker and therefore I hoped (and as it proved) into better weather and road conditions. Crossed from Canada once more into New York State and headed west along the southern shore of Lake Erie into Pennsylvania and then dropping straight down on the I-79 all the way to Charlston, West Virginia, then west to Lexington, Kentucky arriving back at Gethsemani just after 10:30am on Thursday morning - 2317 km (nearly 1500 miles) in 40 hours.
The return journey to Kentucky was long but straightforward and pleasant listening to local Country stations along the way, stopping a couple of times to sleep for an hour before being woken up by the cold and thus being able to continue on my journey.


Time for a shave and a shower, pack, have lunch with Brother Paul who'd arranged our visit to Gethsemani, then out on the highway again heading at last for New Orleans - a most pleasant journey, not least because Sean drove almost all the way (pictured left). I took over the wheel for an hour but really couldn't stay awake so Sean took over again and I went right out.

Only problem with setting off late, of course, is arriving late... 1281km from Gethsemani to New Orleans, leaving at 1:30pm we didn't get there until about 2am this morning (Friday), then had to find the address - without aid of access to the internet or GPS. Predictably, we got lost and ended up in a dark and unknown neighbourhood in central New Orleans whereas we should have been in the suburb of Metairie. Only thing to to do was call our hosts - who we'd agreed to call anyway before entering their house - and Diana so graciously and patiently and expertly talked me through the route to get to her and Wesley's house, staying on the phone till we pulled into their driveway exhuberantly happy and full of emotional joy to be at last home in our long-lost New Orleans - as the song says, "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" Now that we found it, we most certainly do.