What I lived and what I read
Last week I took my first journey out on my own in the little trailer I call Bag End. I needed to see if the story I’ve been writing was actually set in southern Ohio (it is!) and I also visited a few historical sites: Grant’s birthplace and childhood home, and abolitionist John Rankin’s home.

When we met for coffee the week before the trip, Friend Denice was reading David McCullough’s The Pioneers about the settlement of the Northwest territory–and especially Ohio. Perfect! (I loved traveling to South Dakota and Wisconsin while reading Pioneer Girl.) I started the book the weekend before I left and almost finished it in Stonelick State Park where I camped. The blind courage of those early settlers who couldn’t even make their way through the woods without clearing trees and who depended on a stockade fence (!) to keep them safe from Indian attack is beyond my understanding. I also thought about those indigenous peoples who had no concept of humans “owning” land and how incredulous they must have been when these white squatters had the audacity to take over their ancestral home. (Sadly, we know how the story ended.)

The rock stars of my trip were the docents who showed me around Ulysses S. Grant’s birthplace in Point Pleasant, his childhood home in Georgetown, and the John Rankin House in Ripley. They were engaging storytellers and ambassadors for Ohio tourism, and they don’t get enough recognition. At each site the guides suggested other landmarks to take in, which is how I learned about the John Rankin House, my favorite stop of the trip. The abolitionist Rev. Rankin was one of the first conductors on the Underground Railroad. He built his house on the top of a bluff overlooking Ripley, so he could track the movements of the bounty hunters in the town below. Runaways were led to his home by a single light in his window–it is estimated he guided over two thousand to safety.

I learned a lot about traveling alone with Bag End. I officially hate trucks, expressways, and wind. But taking rural routes? While I loved the pace and the space the country roads offered, they added nearly 100 miles each way and the fatigue was overwhelming by the time all was said and done. I’ll need to move slower and stop overnight more often than I did–over four hundred miles in a day proved to be too much. But that’s what this trip was for–to figure out how I can comfortably roam on my own.
By the time I was within an hour of Stonelick, I knew my story was indeed set in Ohio. The corn fields and roadsides were exactly where I saw my character Patty walking, and the Gas ‘n Go could have been any number of seen-better-days garages. My soundtrack as I explored was a local blue grass station and I can imagine Pops humming along with If Teardrops Were Pennies. Although I didn’t work on the piece while in Ohio, I did some pretty substantial organization of the story–so I know which direction I’m headed.
Which is the whole point of a journey, no?