Introduction

It was late on August 8, 2006 and we were still driving because we didn’t want to camp in the rain. We had two rules: First, no setting up of tents after 6 p.m. Second, no driving after dark; this was a sight seeing trip. We were violating the second rule, and might still the first.

Although it was after 9 p.m. it was just now getting really dark on the Olympic Peninsula. John and I had visited Cape Flattery, the northwestern most point of the lower 48 states a few hours before and were hoping to find a town with a motel somewhere here on the coast of Washington. It looked like the earliest hope for such a town would be in the Aberdeen area and that might be as much as another hour of driving depending on the rain, the traffic, and the roads. The rain was light, really a drizzle but it had been persistent since the cape. Traffic was light, an occasional tourist or an occasional logging truck. A dual tanker truck had followed me impatiently for half an hour until I’d pulled over to let him by. He was soon out of sight in the mist ahead. John, bored, was dozing off. I was being careful, not familiar with the road. Still, 10 p.m. might still be possible for a stopping time, depending on what was up there.

Then Highway 101 turned left, to the east, more inland, and started winding up and down back and forth through stands of trees that I could now barely see. This was typical all along the Pacific Coast. The road would be fine for a while, nearly like a freeway, sometimes actually a freeway, then suddenly you’d be down to two narrow lanes or even unmarked dirt with sharp turns on dangerous precipices. This didn’t look like it was that bad in the dark but we still slowed down and that meant more time driving. Except for the rain and the remoteness, today’s drive starting in Seattle should have been one and a half or two day’s worth.

To entertain myself, I asked out loud, “I wonder why the road curves this way here?” In the crowds I run in, this would have been an invitation to discuss forestry, civil engineering, terrain contours, navigation, even politics. There might even have been an expert in one or more of these areas who might even give specifics as to this very piece of road. John, half asleep and with a tinge of annoyance, replied simply,

“Because that’s the way they made it.”

This was a summary statement, totally correct, totally surprising, no discussion. I realized in retrospect, however, that this discovery was one of the prime reasons we were on this trip together. It had taken Viann something like five years to get to this point. In our second year of marriage we had been on a long trip with several days of underestimated driving time, everything analyzed, categorized, recorded, investigated, when she had announced late one day that she had had enough. We would be doing things differently as a couple, she had declared. It had taken John a mere eight or nine days to tire of my full time curiosity. Although my son and I had many things in common, he was more like his mother in this respect, responsive and bright but not so driven to, well, understand everything.

We were getting acquainted. John was fine just existing. This was something I could learn more about. Make a note … be intentional about just existing.

This event, the one with John, the youngest, had been the hardest to plan because it was the most intrinsically un-plan-able. All three kids were different and now, nine years after the first Big Event, the one with Viannah, I was different too. It was difficult for me to execute because we were purposely never thinking more than about two hours ahead. What’s more, I was getting off of a coffee addiction.

The days started and ended late. I looked for structure but tried to minimize its use. We drove past twenty “things to do” (like museums) for every one we took advantage of. Just hangin’ was not my specialty but to join John where he is was to learn to just hang out as much as I could stand. The events with Viannah and Katy had been athletic adventure endeavors: backpacking across the Grand Canyon, visiting a largely undeveloped island, and kayaking. This one was just driving north from Los Angeles to Seattle visiting some of the famous mountains along the way, then back down the coastal highway seeing the sights and taking the opportunities that presented themselves, if we wanted. This was decidedly un-athletic. We had our mountain bikes along but no specific plan as to what to do with them. We were prepared to car camp but didn’t know when or where we would do so. There would be hotels too, like when it rained.

I realized before the first day that the book was going to be different to write. This could not be a record of every word we said and every motion we made over an intense adventure of a few days, as had the accounts of the trips with the girls. We were together virtually every minute for seventeen days. This would have to be something different, it would have to have a different structure, but what? Before deciding that, I would have to discover why we were here and what we were doing.

It was on the final day of the trip, the day of driving mostly on freeways between Lompoc and La Canada, when I discovered what had been John’s priorities for this trip. In another surprise for me, I discovered them by asking him point blank what they were and, yet another surprise, got a specific, detailed answer:

1. Go to Shanghai Gardens in Seattle (A Chinese food restaurant).
2. Bike across the Golden Gate Bridge.
3. Have no other “priorities.”

All right then … what were mine?

1. Conduct an enterprise approximately fair with those of John’s sisters.
2. Get acquainted, specifically away from the whole-family dynamic.
3. Live to tell about it.

As the trip ended, I was not sad that it was over. We were both glad to be off the road. I was sad because it marked the beginning of the end of yet another episode of life, the child-rearing years. Before you know it, John would be gone, off living his own life with his own peers and fighting through their own struggles. Meanwhile, this project that I had worked on for something like fifteen years, “To do something big with each of the kids,” was over. All those things that I was looking forward to doing when I had “some of my own time back” again didn’t seem so fun anymore. What is life all about anyway? It’s not the things you do, it’s not the achievement, it’s the people you do it with and their character. It’s the relationships. It’s the stories.

At lunch on the last day, John said, “Dad, I know why you are doing most of the talking on this trip. It is because you have lived fifty years and have all of the stories. I just have a few.” He proceeded to tell a story about when he was eight. One of his friends had skinned his knees badly on the playground and John and four other eight year olds had discovered that it wasn’t a good idea for them to try to carry him to the school nurse. That was a great story and he had some others but I had the whole history of my family and the family I married into and our family now to tell.

Yes, it was about the stories. We told lots of stories driving up and down the Pacific Coast. John has a mind like a trap; he would remember everything that he was awake to hear. He also had a lot to learn, like how to drive and how to order Pizza over the phone. The child-rearing years weren’t quite over.

In the pages that follow, I can’t hope to recreate every word we said, every sight we saw, everything feeling we felt, everything we did, and everything we missed, I can only attempt to capture the mood and the outline of the stories we lived and told over the last two and a half weeks, over the last six years of preparing, over the last sixteen years, over the last fifty years…. It’s all about the stories.

Courtney Duncan, La Canada, California, 2006 August 17.

About writing books.

I realize that a large collection of “interesting” material such as this does not necessarily constitute a captivating book. As with the other books, the purpose here has not been to captivate or inform general readers or sell copies, the purpose here has been to document an event and a time in our lives for that time when John himself is about fifty and remembers the trip but not all of the stories anymore. You would be surprised how much the world can change in 30-35 years.

Read all, some, or none at your discretion, but I think John, or one of his relatives, might take some interest in this story, these stories, one of these days….