You Stride On, My Son, Ahead of Us, Up Enchanted Rock
Poems and Thoughts from our American Odyssey
You Stride On, My Son, Ahead of Us, Up Enchanted Rock It was one of those moments that you recognise after the event as epiphanic—charged, numinous in some way. —William Boyd, Any Human Heart You stride on, my son, ahead of us, up Enchanted Rock, not a bead of sweat though Jim and I were lathered, and bearing life’s baton, you entered the cave red dark. A steep, weathered pink dome, a stone skin with a pock, a tunnel system under its crust, entrance puckered, you stride on, my son, ahead of us, up Enchanted Rock. Jim, my Texan brother, demanded of you a taking stock, handing you our era’s torch, the light by granite splintered, and bearing life’s baton, you entered the cave red dark. The narrow challenge of the entrance made me baulk. I waited on the surface, a poor father hardly fathered as you stride on, my son, ahead of us, up Enchanted Rock. Jim appeared after some time, face streaked with shock. You had left him behind, two boys in tow, a leader uncovered, and bearing life’s baton, you entered the cave red dark. You emerged broiled, having broken childhood’s lock. The baton we passed, you said, was heavier than expected. You stride on, my son, ahead of us, up Enchanted Rock, and bearing life’s baton, you enter the cave red dark. Enchanted Rock is an enormous pink granite pluton batholith located in the Llano Uplift, approximately seventeen miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas, United States. It is sacred to the Tonkawa, Apache, and Comanche tribes.
Click play to hear the poem
Part Six
We were coming to the end of our trip. The wonders of great plains and the grandeur of Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks were behind us. This part of the trip was about Tom, my son, and an encounter he had been building up towards, for at least six years.
We left Idaho Falls and its gigantic Walmart that we visited after having had, surprisingly, one of the nicest curries I have ever had. We found the restaurant in a google search, named The Taste of the Himalayas, our server was new to her job. We ordered with trepidation, as we come from the North of England where good curry was brought to us by the Bangladeshi and Pakistani immigrants who came to work in our factories and enrich our culture and cuisine. We were happily surprised and shaken out of our prejudice by the food. Tom then needed some resupplying of snacks and shower gel, so we entered the jaws of the behemoth that was a Walmart Supercenter. We came away overawed by the sheer volume of stuff on offer in this soccer pitch sized store. We were most horrified/impressed by the hugest sack of M&Ms we had ever seen. It resembled a large bag of dog biscuits you might see in the UK - requiring a carry handle as it was so large. We mused on all this as we crossed a Truck-Stop with cabs full of sleeping truckers.
We hit the road early and started the long trek along highways 26 and 20 to Boise. Why Boise? Well, this final destination of our odyssey began to establish itself in Tom’s consciousness and therefore our itinerary some 7 years ago. It all started with a PlayStation 4 and a game - Rainbow Six : Siege, known as a First Person Shooter. Tom found himself playing this game online with some Sheffield mates who then stumbled into an international group; all playing the same game and there began an online friendship that led to Highway 20 to Boise.
Again the terrain around us changed. We were now in the Potato state. It was a little like heading east from Sheffield to Doncaster, but on steroids, oh and we were going West. From the hilly world of the Pennines you hit the flatlands going east towards the Humber. So here it was the same but writ large, from the soaring heights of the Grand Tetons to the endless fields of wheat, maze and, of course, spuds, row on row of potatoes. Every so often we would stop for fuel and snacks on the 300 mile drive. The gas stations were not just fuel stops they were little community centres in a sea of agriculture. Often staffed by young women, four or five of them, they provide food, restrooms, showers, and a cornucopia of food and drink. Here we saw cowboy booted farmers ambling and exchanging the time of day and shooting the breeze with the staff who they seemed to greet like family members. Perhaps they were. This is rural, midwest America at its most pristine.
In order to make the time pass on the long straight roads we listened to a fantastic, if rather inane, podcast called the Friendship Onion.
Hosted by the two actors that played Merry and Pippin in the Lord of the Rings trilogy - Dom Monaghan and Billy Boyd, it is a daft but highly amusing celebration of their time in the films and their friendship and the friendships they formed on the set. It made us laugh out loud. It also presaged what was to happen when we arrived in Boise.
Tom was about to meet the people he had been playing online with for years. Chad and Shelby lived in Boise and the three others Michael, Brandon and Mason were flying in from Kentucky and Chicago. Having had a good night’s sleep we headed out to the rendezvous, a barbecue joint in a suburb of the city. As we pulled into the parking lot they were all gathered on the sidewalk and as Tom exited the car they engulfed him as if he was a long lost relative. Then they all respectfully welcomed me and we sat around a large table to have our first meal together.
I was really moved by this happy coming together. I have to admit to being slightly wary; as I am of an age that views the whole online phenomenon with a level of unease and possibly prejudice. The genuine warmth and kindness in this disparate group of web facilitated friends was so great to see and feel.
Tom has been recently diagnosed as Neurologically Diverse and I realised that he had shared his journey with his friends and it was now apparent he had received a huge amount of care and support from them. I was actually stunned by the power of these friendships to provide a safety net in times of tribulation and struggle. It was also clear that Tom had reciprocated in the years during which they had founded their friendship and camaraderie.
The poem at the head of this post comes from a time when Tom was much younger and still reeling from another diagnosis, that of Type One Diabetes. At that time we were visiting a friend of mine (who sadly I am now estranged from) in Texas. He had taken us to the hill country and this incredible domed pink granite Batholith named Enchanted Rock. It is riddled with caves and tunnels and as I was suffering from anxiety, he and Tom went into the tunnels and I waited on the surface.
After a while Jim reappeared and I asked where Tom was, he said that Tom had gone deeper in and he had lost contact with him, that he was with a group of teenagers. A very anxious twenty minutes ensued until Tom appeared red faced and dusty. I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to ring his mother to say we had lost him! He had in fact led the youngsters back to the surface.
As I reflected on these events I realised they mirrored the initiatory struggle Tom had been through in the years leading up to this time. Later he did attend a Young Men’s Rites of Passage that we (Jim, myself and others building on the work of people like Mircea Eliade and Richard Rohr) came up with. However, I would say that there are always symbolic moments and experiences that are initiatory and this was one of them. By initiatory I mean they move us from one phase of our life to another and we are able to let go of things that no longer serve us in order to take up new forms that are more life giving. There is also a powerful initiatory struggle in crises of physical or mental health and, for sure, Tom and I have had both.
Without conscious rituals of loss and renewal, individuals and societies lose the capacity to experience the sorrows and joy that are essential for feeling fully human. Without them life flattens out, and meaning drains from both living and dying. Soon there is a death of meaning and an increase in meaningless deaths.
Mircea Eliade
Tom made some changes in his life after the young men’s rites that were healthy and helpful. It was at this time Tom began to form these friendships that had come to such fruition here in Boise, Idaho.
After lunch we went to Independence Indoor Shooting an experience that, for me, was a massive culture shock. This a place common in the USA, where you can go and shoot a variety of different firearms - for fun! As Tom and his friends spent so much time playing shooting games this was just a live version of the online experience. The whole thing was very regulated and well marshalled and managed by the staff and I can see the excitement in firing weapons like the 50 calibre that Tom shot at $10 a shell. However, it was also a huge shock to my system. Standing behind Tom as he lay on the floor to fire the weapon and feeling the massive recoil and smelling the pungent gunpowder filling the air made me feel very uneasy and vulnerable. Michael who is bit older than the others, and has served in the military shared that he had been in Afghanistan and been under fire from such a weapon. I could see the terror that such weapons create and the courage that he exhibited in joining up. My respect for him and his kindness to Tom over the years grew through the next few days.
The older staff member from Independence who was looking after us asked us why we were there and I told him that we were from the UK. He said ‘Aw I’m real sorry about that.’ When I asked why he said ‘well you can’t carry firearms’. ‘No’ I said with pride, he replied ‘My God I would not feel safe’. This powerfully delineated the culture shock. I feel safe because we have few guns, he felt safe because they have loads. Reeling from all this we went back to Chad and Shelby’s for a drink and more chat. As we headed back to the hotel I thought about the goodness of these friends that Tom had made and that my judgments about the violence of American culture was not born out in these generous and hospitable people.
We talked again in the car about the formation of the USA, the Oregon Trail and the rugged individualism it engendered, the need to be self reliant in a society with hardly any safety nets, all this has contributed to such a different mindset to ours.
It is without doubt, a foreign country. A country beset with all kinds of issues and divisions, it is hard to see how the problem of numerous mass shootings will be solved and Tom’s friends were equally bemused at the ease with which a gun can be procured in the USA. Each culture has its issues and God knows we in the UK have enough, but the Gordian Knot of gun ownership presents a horrible dilemma. We headed back to the hotel and the promise of another day together tomorrow.
The next morning we met at the Botanical Gardens, a visit for my benefit, I think, after the trauma of the shooting range and it certainly was more restful. We wandered the flower beds and sculptures in the early sun and I marvelled at the easy humour of the lads. Sited next to an old penitentiary still sporting the observation towers it did feel a little like being on the set of the Shawshank Redemption.
Shelby had to work so we arranged to meet her for lunch at a place called Chick-fil-A, a chain that they thought me and Tom should sample. Fast food at its best and worst, all at the same time. Shelby said she would meet us for the evening’s adventure and headed off. We went back to Brandon and Michael’s hotel room and watched a film. Then it was off to a place called Top Golf, again I think for my benefit. It was a two tier golf range that left the MoorView range in Sheffield looking very poor and shabby. It had a huge bar and grill and then each booth had its own server to bring whatever food and drink you wanted to order. We took two booths which each had two large TV screens that told you the length and direction of each shot and gave points for club distance and accuracy. Tom and I were the ones with the experience this time.
I don’t actually like golf that much but have friends who have retired and want to play, so I go along. With one of these groups of friends we play what one of them describes as Buddhist golf, where the ability and skill are second to the act of being out in the green world and sharing each other’s friendship. Tom has also played a bit and so we were sought out for advice and coaching. They got the hang of it all pretty quick and we had such a great time.
Back at the hotel we packed and reminisced on the trip. It had been a real odyssey for both of us. We had both travelled the trail carrying the burden of our own personal time of life. This is the great virtue of a trip like this - the space and time to process and to take stock.
Excerpt from the Journey | By David Whyte
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.
These words came back to me from my friend David’s work. We were feeling melancholic at the prospect of leaving, of ending the journey. We had taken the Holy Road as I shared in the previous post and now we were leaving. The words of David’s piece were reassuring to me that all endings are also beginnings.
Our last gathering with Tom’s mates was at a breakfast restaurant near Chad’s. With the car all packed up and ready for the long haul to Salt Lake City we waited in the parking lot for the lads to arrive. They turned up looking like a Reservoir Dogs pastiche.
We consumed an obscene amount of breakfast fare and laughed and chatted and then made a sad parting. I often hear so much disparagement of Tom’s generation, gamers who are just closeted in their rooms, not really in this world. Well these young man were the opposite of that caricature, all with different takes on the world, engaged and present. The world they live in takes a powerful toll on their mental health and it is in these types of online cadres , if Tom’s mates are any guide, great friendship is fostered.
The next two days were spent negotiating the drive to Salt Lake City, flying from there to Dallas Fort Worth and then on to London Heathrow. We were in that haze that transatlantic travel creates, flying through the night, watching the first three Harry Potter movies on a seat back screen, eating plastic food and trying, in vain, to sleep. As we saw the dawn rise over London we silently acknowledged to each other that we had shared a wedge of freedom that only the road can mediate.
