Wandering Westward

Greetings from Sedona, Arizona! In this episode Wendell shares the roots of his fascination with the American Southwest, and talks about the beauty and splendor on display during road trips across the United States. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

If you were driving down Makrap Road in Trinidad and Tobago around the latter half of 1990, it is very possible that as you drove by Fatima Grounds, which sits opposite the college, you may have seen a young boy about 15 years old, dressed in his school uniform, long cocky pants, brown or black shoes, and the school's signature grey monogrammed shirt, by himself running full speed across the field, head tilted back as he raced across the cut grass. Now you could surmise that the boy was probably an athlete working on some additional training or trying to get, you know, a personal best up for his sprint time or something like that. You could even stretch a bit further and suggest that the boy was maybe conducting an experiment of some kind, getting his heart rate up to measure the effects of strenuous physical activity. Well, spoiler alert, the boy was me, and I wasn't doing any of these things. In fact, my situation was far more dire. I was running full speed away from graboids, the giant man-eating worms that for a very brief time had terrorized the citizens of the fictitious town of Perfection, Nevada. In my mind, in my imagination, I was running alongside Val and Ur as we attempted to outrun these savage but highly intelligent creatures from the 1990 B movie Cult Classic Tremors. I had seen Tremors at Astor Cinema and I fell in love with it immediately. Not just for its cool cast and cooler monsters, you know, shout out to old school practical effects, but also for the environment that it took place in. Now, Perfection, uh though a fictitious town, um, it was supposed to be in Nevada, but it was actually filmed in California. That sat in a valley between these massive mountain ranges, and it took place in these wide open flatlands with these rugged peaks in the background. The terrain looked rough and unforgiving with hearty plants pucking the landscape of dust, dirt, and giant boulders. And as a kid who grew up on American films, I have always been fascinated by large sections of the western United States with its vast open vistas walled off by massive mountain ranges. Um, I grew up on an island where naturally we were surrounded by water. And if you drove in any direction, you would hit the ocean within a reasonable time. And unless I didn't leave the house, I saw the ocean at least twice a day growing up. You know, my drive to and from school every day featured the Northern Range on one side and the Gulf of Paria on the other side. And we also lived in a valley, so from my bedroom, I could see across both Pete Valley and Digomartin to the lush green mountains on the other side. But those mountains pale in comparison to the ones portrayed in the films featuring the American Southwest. For context, Trinidad and Tobago is just under 2,000 square miles. The state of Nevada alone is over 110,000 square miles. When I was in Form 1, which is the equivalent of uh sixth grade in the United States, my my school, Fatima College, had uh something called the Movie Club, I think it was AV Club on certain Fridays, where we would pay $2 to watch relatively new films in the audiovisual room. Um it was like this tiny little screen and they played movies off of Betamax tapes. But um, you know, back then uh international releases didn't line up the way they do today. You know, today in the the film exhibition market, a lot of times you have films that are released in the US and they are released simultaneously in multiple international markets, uh, including Trinidad. And actually sometimes, you know, I've had situations where my friends would see a big budget uh blockbuster film in Trinidad before it was even released in the United States, but not so back in the day. Back in the day, it would take six months or more if we even got the movie at all. So any chance that I had to see a film that had just come out, um, I would jump at it, particularly because we didn't even have a VCR at home. And so I remember seeing uh movies like Beetlejuice there, and also Young Guns, a slick retelling of the Billy the Kid story featuring members of the Brat Pack, including Emilio Esteves, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dumont Mulrooney, and Casey Samaisko as John Tunstall's regulators, turned lawmen, turned outlaws who traversed the New Mexico landscape. And then going back further to 1984, I remember seeing the movie Red Dawn at Globe, which tells the tale of a Soviet invasion of the fictional town of Calumet, Colorado. But that was actually filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico. But anyway, so the Wolverines, this band of young teenage rebels uh led by Patrick Swayze, they fled into the mountains after the invasion and they launched attacks on the invading forces using guerrilla tactics. Um, and uh, you know, most of the political context of the film went over my head as I was far more interested in what the Wolverines were up to in between blowing up Soviet stuff, so including hunting, camping, and you know, blending into the rugged terrain. This was this was all fascinating to me. And unlike the urban centers of the United States, these places that these films took place in, um, they seemed just a million miles away to me. Like many trainees, I have multiple family members living in the US. And that, coupled with being the son of a pilot, meant that I traveled to places like New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami regularly throughout my childhood. But these places, in addition to being extremely urban, were much more diverse. And even if people didn't sound like me, many of them actually looked like me. And in contrast, none of the movies I listed above feature major black characters, if any. And so for me, these films, uh, they were like looking into the lives of people who are completely foreign, right? I have um I have my fair share of big city films that I love. And to be honest, there are way more of those in my top 100 than those that take place in remote areas. But I have context for those, right? Even though I had never been to Chicago, uh, when I watched Ferris Buller's Day Off, I could kind of make, I could place myself there because I'd been to New York, another major city. Uh, even though I hadn't been to LA, there were enough similarities to other densely populated urban centers that I could also draw through lines, but not so for the American West and the Southwest in particular. You know, giant worms and invading armies aside, these environments continue to fascinate me to this day. Uh, whenever I watch any of these movies, I spend a lot of time studying the landscape, uh, the way uh people talk, the way they communicate, the way they dress, and all of the ephemera that sits on the edges of each shot. And these things, while they felt like they were based in reality, they were as arbitrary as cultural and contextual cues from, say, a movie about the Australian outback, because I had no tangible way to connect with them. I mean, there's so much iconography that goes along with deserts like massive cacti, giant boulders, pesky rattlesnakes, old saloons, rocky cliffs, and and you know, even roving tumbleweeds. I didn't see any of those things in my lifetime. So after I finished my undergraduate work in Maryland, I had the opportunity to move to Southwest Virginia, uh, which is more rural than Baltimore, certainly more rural than New York. Um, but I I dove right into life in small-town America. Now, this is the Appalachian region, or kind of the edge of it, right? Uh, and Appalachian is very different than, say, Texas, but that was the gateway for me to the rest of America. Uh, there were no tall buildings, no Caribbean restaurants, and in fact, the only ethnic restaurants generally on display in these towns were uh Mexica uh you get a Mexican joint and a Chinese buffet. And interestingly, the further south that I've gone, I found this to be true in most southern towns and cities. So starting on the northeastern side of the country and then moving down a little bit south, and then of course moving to Louisiana in 2009, I started experiencing what people, what most people know intrinsically, but you don't really wrap your head around it unless you experience it. I started realizing just how vast and diverse this country is, and how it changes as you sit in a car and go mile after mile after mile. The topography changes, the flora and fauna change, the foods change, and of course the culture changes. And they're they're indicators, right? Both obvious and subtle. You know, what you see on billboards and signs, the types of vehicles that people drive, the brands that are rep uh on display, um, on signage, or when you go to rest stops or gas stations, and these regional differences become more and more stark the further you go. Because we are based in Louisiana, we now have access to the American South through Texas. And I'm in fact recording this episode in Sedona, Arizona, which is about 18 hours away from Shriveport, Louisiana. Essentially, it was a two-day road trip, and day one was spent traversing diagonally through Texas all the way up to Amarillo. And then day two, it was through New Mexico and into Arizona. So we were on the road for about 10 hours each day with stops. And um just uh, you know, again, uh just for some perspective, we spent the entire first day in Texas. Uh, Texas is about 278,000 square miles. Uh, and this is why many trainees who visit balk at the idea of road trips in America, even if the time spent in the car is the same. For example, driving two hours in Trinidad is way different than driving for two hours on an American interstate. Or at least that's what my mom tells me when she comes to visit, which is why she's way less interested in driving over to Dallas or driving down to Houston from Shreveport. Uh, she would rather just stay in town and, you know, see and do things in and around um the Shriveport Borgia area. And here in Sedona, I am keenly aware that we are still in America, but you know, the accents and the figures of speech are different. Uh for outsiders, Sedona is, for all intents and purposes, more of a resort town. So there's more of a chill vibe here. Uh, a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are in the mountains, but there are also historical and prehistorical elements woven into the fabric of these states, such as the influence of both Native American and Mexican cultures, along with literal artifacts from from way further back. Uh, and then you fold in the salt of the earth grit that you get when people live in in what is uh for the most part an inhospitable place. And then you get a subculture that is very unique compared to other parts of the US. And I cannot overstate how breathtaking the terrain is when you see it in person. The mountains of Sedona, for example, they are severe, but they are so, so beautiful. You see the impact of time right in front of you. The striations of the rock faces with different colors and layers exposed by time and erosion with little splashes of green pocking the surfaces. These mountains, they've been here uh for time immemorial, and they will be here long after we are gone. They will continue to slowly shift and undulate and change over time. And it's it's humbling knowing that my entire lifespan and the lifespan of my entire family, even those still yet to be born, will just be like a notch against the timeline of these mountains. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, uh just know that the exposed portions of these mountains have been around for over 275 million years. Uh just to again add a little bit of context, the now infamous uh Jurassic period, the second segment of the Mesozoic era lasted from 201 million to 145 million years ago. So, you know, in the Northeast, history is often contextualized by like the formation of government and the growth of the nation. In the deep south, history is often looked at through the lens of um slavery and deep-rooted cultures that were there and and brought over from uh America, I'm sorry, Africa and Europe. Um, but here, and again, I don't live here, but this is just my perspective of it, there are cues and markers of more recent history, but there's also uh reverence to history that predates all of that stuff before America was even America. You know, when you drive through Louisiana, you see signs for like the Barney and Clyde Museum or the World War II Museum, sugarcane, sugarcane plantations, antebellum houses, etc. But when you're driving through this part of the country, you see signs for Native American sites, uh, meteor craters that you can visit, petrified forests, dinosaur exhibits, and stuff like that. I mean, I have um in New Mexico visited dwellings that go back to 900 AD and hiked to look at petroglyphs that are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old. There are also much younger artifacts on display as well, though. You know, as you drive on the highways of Route 66, the famous Route 66, you see the remnants of small towns, these like hollowed-out buildings in tiny clusters, uh, where maybe there was like an old gas station and a few houses and a little restaurant, and they just sit there abandoned. And I always question, like, who were these people? Who put the stuff here? What were they, what were they chasing economically, and then what caused that decline? Um, these small little remote clusters of people and places in between long stretches of desert. Uh when, you know, and also like when you drive through Texas, you run through all these small towns, and most of them still have their brick main streets, an old theater that may still show movies, but sometimes it's like a community center, or maybe they do local theater there. But the marquees are still there. There's always an old bank building that was from 18, whatever, an old general store. Uh, maybe there's a big house either in and around the main street, formerly owned by somebody who the town was probably named after and probably owned half of the businesses there back in the day. And again, this is stuff that I all just saw in movies. So to be able to see them up close and personal, you know, I feel the weight of generations and generations past. And of course, this is a complicated relationship that I have with it because I'm black and I am walking in places where people who looked like me were subjugated for a long period of time, or who didn't have access to the stuff that I have now. You know, I they couldn't walk the streets as freely as I do now, or walk into a store and buy stuff. So it it gets really, really heady really quickly. And then there are just these random things that connect dots for me. I mean, I remember the first time I saw a a real tumbleweed going past the car. I literally stopped in the middle of the road and I looked over at Jesse and I was like, that's the tumbleweeds. And she was kind of like laughing, like giggling at me, just at my glee about it. Um, but it's so hard to explain what that's like for someone like me who, you know, I'd seen that in popular culture all my life, but to see it right in front of me, like that. I mean, I've been living in America since 1996, and it took me almost 30 years to see my first Dust Devil or Tumbleweed, or even the kind of uh cacti that you see drawn in Western cartoons or comics. Um, we have cacti in Trinidad. I think cacti exists pretty much all over the world, but to see it, to see the the large kind of um the ones with the arms that kind of go up and out, uh the way they're drawn again in in every cartoon or comic you've ever seen. That's just it's it it's it's a small thing, but it's a big thing. And the colors within the environment are amazing. You know, people often associate desert landscapes with bland, yellow, or tan. But driving through northwest Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, you see deep, deep reds and oranges and sometimes even purples. The these rocks, um, there's some that look uh black and volcanic, and then others that look like granite. Um in Sedona at night, the mountains look like these drab monolithic shapes that encroach on the starry night sky. But when the sun comes up, their color explodes and they literally change in brightness and hue throughout the day as the sun moves across the sky. And then so whenever I'm staring up at one of these mountains or looking down from a scenic viewpoint on a hike, I try to put myself into the shoes of uh someone who's indigenous to this region. But way, way, way back in the day, you know, sitting on a horse or just standing there looking out at the majesty and splendor laid out before them. And I think about how differently my worldview would be if it was stripped away of all the trappings of modern society, you know, bills, emails, text messages, social media, and all that other stuff. And what would it be like if this was my backyard, literal backyard, right? How different would I be spiritually if I routinely sat and meditated on one of these energy vortexes in the region? If if you know the lens of the world that I looked through had a different color palette, if it was colored by deep reds and browns instead of green trees and the blue ocean that I grew up with. When you're on the highway in New Mexico, in the foreground, you know, you can see rocks and vegetation, and then of course some desert. But then in the midground, sometimes you see a train and I'm talking man. Away, you see a full train snaking across the terrain from Injun to Caboose with over 100 cars in between. And beyond that, you see a storm system, the entire storm system, the entirety of it, the clouds, the sheets of rain falling off of it close to the horizon line. Literally as far as the eye can see. And you see all of this in one glance outside of your car window as you're driving by. It gives me a similar sense of awe and wonder as when I'm back home standing next to the ocean. Staring at the ocean, standing on a beach, that is one of the things that just gives me peace. But the ocean is also terrifying to me because it's so vast and so unexplored and it's so much of an alien environment. And similarly, I imagine what it would be like to be stuck out in the desert without food or water or shelter. Because there's no shade there. There are no trees to hide under, like in Shreveport or in Trinidad. These are environments that demand respect and that we find inner strength to live in them. And so when I take a step back and I look at America as a whole, I think of it as a savage place. And I don't mean that in terms of the people that live there. I mean that in terms of the environments that exist in most regions. I mean, no matter where you live in America, you have to deal with something, whether it's extremes of heat or cold or humidity or mosquitoes. You have to worry about all these different types of animals and creatures that potentially are trying to kill you. If you're in Louisiana, you have to worry about hurricanes and tornadoes. If you're in the Midwest, you may not have to worry about hurricanes, but you do have to worry about tornadoes and extreme cold. If you live on the East Coast, you probably don't have to worry about tornadoes, but you have to worry about hurricanes. And if you go further up, you have to deal with severe winter weather. And then you have earthquakes on the West Coast, rain up in the Pacific Northwest, and so on. I mean, there's always something. And I will tell you that as a Trinidadian, we are spoiled. We live below the hurricane belt. So for us, it's either rain or hot sun or both on any given day. Recently we've had higher incidences of earthquakes, but that is a relatively new thing. And, you know, beyond that, a decade in Trinidad is just a decade in Trinidad. You have a rainy season, you have a dry season. We get Sahara dust that literally blows over from the dark continent. But other than that, most of our issues like flooding come from infrastructural man-made deficiencies, not natural um natural issues. I mean, we grew up making fun of the great and amazing meteorologist Robin Mirage, uh, talking about the intertropical conversion zone or ITCZ, because sometimes that was the only thing that he would talk about. Uh, and we would just make, it was like a running joke for us in school. But I've learned so much about this country by driving through it, seeing how it all works together, how everything is tethered and interconnected, and still contains so much diversity in the 3,000 miles between the east and west coasts. And you can slice it in so many ways, right? Accents, food, music, recreational activities, industries, the way homes are constructed, the way they're painted, and what they use to build them. You know, in Arizona, for example, I just discovered that people put AC units on the roof. Uh, in Louisiana, it's at the side or the back of the house. Um, you have uh beautiful adobe homes made from literal dirt in New Mexico and ordinances in Sedona where people have to paint houses and businesses in such a way to be complementary to the environment. In Sedona, the McDonald's arches are not gold, but rather turquoise. Not even Ronald McDonald can F with Sedona. And when I'm feeling extra nuddy on road trips, I think about how massive and integrated supply chains are in America. On a two-day road trip, you could drive alongside and pass hundreds and hundreds of trucks carrying goods from one place to the next, refrigerated goods, packaged dry goods, raw materials, fuel, machinery, vehicles, both military and civilian, windmill blades, entire homes. And then you have Amazon trucks, target trucks, Walmart trucks, trucks with um grocery store chain logos on them. And then you look at the trains and you have hundreds of containers with Amazon smiles on it, stacked double decker. And and this is how, you know, I have come to understand like how commerce really happens and match that with all of the stuff that I learned in business school. You see that America is this living, breathing entity with all of these arteries, that these veins of this interstate system, and they have people and goods constantly moving through it. And as a foreigner, I I relish opportunities to travel like this. I can experience regional cultures and subcultures without getting on a plane to travel internationally. The America I've experienced is vastly different from what's portrayed in the media and popular culture. And that includes what is both transmitted to the world, but also what is presented to the average American. Sadly, much less their home state. Um, there are kids in New York who will never experience the hospitality of the South. Um, there are kids in Louisiana who will never hike up a mountain, and there are kids in New Mexico who will never visit the ocean. And to me, that's a tragedy. Travel not only leads to knowledge, but it leads to understanding. And in times like these, when we are so polarized by what we are forced fed about the other, right? The other people, other people who look and sound and think differently to us. I think in times like these, a little understanding can go a long way. You know, the average American for the most part has the right to get into a vehicle and go anywhere in this country that they want. And listen, I am not ignorant to issues of social, racial, and economic discrimination. America is not a perfect place by any means. And like most countries, we have serious problems to deal with, but for the most part, you still have the opportunity to get into a vehicle and drive from one end of it to another and hopefully do so with some level of freedom. You don't have to go through checkpoints to go from one state to the next. You know, America is essentially one vast canvas, uh, one big playground, a living, breathing, and ever-evolving tapestry of industry and culture. On a side note, I learned recently that the name Wendell is of old Germanic origin, with roots meaning wanderer, traveler, or seeker. And according to ancestry.com, the name is associated with exploration and adventure, symbolizing someone who embraces change, seeks new experiences, and travels. Now, I'm not sure if this is a situation where the tail is wagging the dog or the other way around. I don't know if when my parents picked my name, they had any of this in mind, but either way, it seems to fit as travel and movement from one place, one region, to another has become inextricably linked with my identity. And to be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way. So, for the foreigners thinking of visiting the US, perhaps next time, consider visiting a city outside of major population centers on the coasts. And if you're an American thinking of traveling, might I suggest the next great American road trip. As Horace Greeley once said, go west, young man or woman. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Freshwater Yankee. I want to give a shout out to uh two supporters of the podcast, Jaleen Amau, thank you for your ongoing support, and Joyce Amau Ali, thank you for your donation. You can support the show financially by clicking the link in the show notes, and you can also help us by sharing the podcast, by subscribing, and giving us a five-star review on your favorite platform. And again, thank you for listening and Sedona Wits. So, as we say in Trinidad, I'll go on there. Later.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Music was provided by Peter Sandy of Home Based Productions, and I am your host, Wendell Riley.