Happy Birthday to me. I live in a tree. With the birds and the zebras and the monkeys like me. Sorry about that but I really liked the “zebra” imagery. I am celebrating this birthday in Smith County, Kansas. This unfortunate coincidence, as you might imagine, was unplanned. I was heading for Smith County, Kansas and I was hoping to survive until my birthday but did not know that both would happen at the same time. That’s the way things happen sometime. Luckily there was an unexpected bonus – the fulfillment of a lifelong dream – that I didn’t even see coming. But let’s not get ahead of the story. 

It was time. 

I have been bouncing around for six weeks and the target I set to make my relocation decision had long passed. Much of these weeks were wasted looking for a place to settle but I was getting the feeling that my wanderings were becoming more an excuse not to make a decision rather than providing the input I needed to facilitate my choice. This was not going to do. I needed to get on with it but, in a last death-rattle of procrastination, I decided I should go location shopping for a book idea I had been playing with.

On December 17 I found myself in Marathon, Florida just 56 short miles from Key West and the legendary Mile 0 marker. I should go to Key Weird. Mile Zero. What a perfect place to begin a trip! My dillydallying thought process went. It would be so…so… Symbolic.” Whatever. My skinflint tendencies kicked in and I realized that 56 times 2 is about 112 miles which in my van would set me back about $21 which is a nice dinner out at some point. So screw the whole Key West idea. I drove out to US 1, The Overseas Highway, and turned right. I was heading north back towards the mainland and whatever fate had in store for me.

Not so fast Bucko. I had a critical stop to make which would sever my physical ties with Florida. Even when I was off sailing I had maintained a small pile of stuff in a storage unit in South Florida. I had to pack up that stuff and hit the road. As copious as my new van is I knew I would be unable to stuff my meager belongings into it and still be able to drive. So I bought a trailer. I had looked into renting a U-Haul but given my propensity for meandering travel it turned out that it would be at least a break-even deal to buy a new trailer and then sell it whenever I got to wherever I was going. I could even – at least according to the trailer salesman – expect to sell my trailer for more than I paid for it. Ca-ching! I plunked down my money, hitched up my wagon and headed to the storage unit.

Filling a trailer is something of a scientific endeavor. The instructions say “put 60% of the weight in front of the axle and 40% behind it.” This guarantees that the trailer will be stable and will not cause the kind of accident I just saw driving up from the Keys where the trailer and tow vehicle rolled over repeatedly as they left the roadway.  Not wanting to experience that particular excitement. I carefully laid out the contents of the storage unit and, using sound principles, started guessing at where the 60/40 split might lie. I packed the heaviest items over the axle and then started filling from the front back. I reserved some compact, heavy boxes – rocks, dive weights, my collection of depleted uranium – to be used as ballast should the mood strike and I felt more weight was needed in the rear. I crammed everything in the trailer, tossed in the ballast and drove away. The trailer behaved well at all speeds so I felt ready to be on the road.

I planned a quick one-day trip to Orlando to say some goodbyes and get some maintenance done on the van. It was time for an oil change and the antifreeze looked more like cappuccino than ethylene glycol. At the service station the technician pointed out a disturbing leak from the transmission and some worrying cracks in the tires. It seemed that the previous owner had put light-load tires on the beast. Flashing back to the scene on the turnpike I added the transmission service and four new tires to the work order. There went the $21 I saved by not going to Key West. The next day I stopped in at my “home town” and got the tags for the van and trailer. 

Goodbye Florida. Hello Road.

The book idea I’m working on is set in the middle of the country. In the exact middle of the country to be precise. Namely: Smith County, Kansas. My excuse was to go there to get a quick feel for the place and some general images of the town where scenes could be set and the novel’s action played out. I assumed I’d have some more research to do but at least I’d have a physical view of the area to set my research against. That was the plan.

On my third day out, driving across the plains of North Texas in the dark, I had something of a revelation. It came to me that the secret to answering any question or solving any problem was to get to its essence; to find the center of the thing. Here I was befuddled by a question of where to live, essentially a question of geography, and I am on the road towards the Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States!Woooeeeeeoooooeeeee….. As I was limiting myself to the lower 48 this was perfect. My research trip had turned into a quest of sorts. I was heading for the Center. There to find my answer. I pulled into a rest stop and camped for the night.

The next day was fairly short as road trips go and I picked my route off the map. I went from the interstate to a four-lane highway to a two-lane road that struck out due west across the high plains. I passed through small town after small town each the same as the last until I crossed the railroad tracks once more and dropped down a short incline into Cawker City, Kansas. There at the town line was the sign, a signal from the Universe itself. Just like that I was on my Path once again. The sign read “Welcome to Cawker City, Kansas”. Then “Home of the World’s Largest Ball of Twine”.

It is not the undisputed champ. There is another billed as The World’s Largest Ball of Twine by One Man up in Minnesota as well as a couple of others pretending to the title on technicalities. The Kansan String-Ball is a still dynamic and living thing. Each year it grows and grows. The stringy monster is immense and housed outdoors in its own Twine Shrine. It is so large, over 40 feet in circumference, that the lower section of the handspun orb is compressing under its own weight and oozing out from beneath the spheroid. The result looks like something not that far removed from the lower two tiers of a snowman. And yet it continues to grow. “The World’s Largest” Whatever is the staple of Road-Trip Americana and The World’s Largest Ball of Twine is the archetype. The World’s Largest Ball of Twine has been something I have always longed to see. To come upon it accidentally, on a Road Trip for god’s sake, evokes a feeling I imagine is similar to the one someone more devout than myself would experience while on vacation in the Holy Land, turning over a rock, and finding an old sandal with a nail-hole in it.

It was a sign.

Which is how I found myself on the side of a small hill at Latitude N39°50′, Longitude W098°35′ staring at the flag topped plinth that marks the center of my nation. It is so freaking cold that the small tree standing next to the marker is coated in frost that has simply condensed out of the frigid, dry air. It looks like a giant pile of cotton candy perched on a gnarled gray stick. I look out across the high plains. The distant brown fields are broken only by scattered stock ponds and the tiny specks of cattle grazing on the land. I look in all directions and it’s pretty much the same. There’s nothing drawing me in any particular way. And then The Question came to mind. 

What are you at the center of? The United States. I stepped away from the marker. You’re still at the center. Well sure I am. I’m at the center of the surface of the earth. But I’m there anywhere I go. It doesn’t matter if I’m on the land or far at sea there’s an equal amount of Earth’s surface in any direction. And? Well, looking at it as a Navigator, the whole rest of the Universe revolves around that point. Sure, not really, but from your point of view, yes. Wait… I am always at the Center of All Things? Yes, everybody is.

At that point it got way too Carlos Castaneda for me but I had my answer. From my earliest years I have been curious, probably pathologically so. I would leave no stone unturned, no path unexplored, no wild creature unmolested. I would wander down hills just to see if there was a track that led someplace else. If there wasn’t I’d climb back up, undaunted. And look for another. This tendency, as you might imagine, really cut down on hiking partners. Starting college I was subjected to a barrage of psychological tests to counsel my career choice. My results came back with a flat zero line against all normal vocations. There was a single tall spike in the curve labeled “Adventurer”. My whole life experience has been to take me away from what I know and on to something different. My choice about where to live could be nothing less.

So before dawn on this inconsequential anniversary of my birth I pulled out onto US Highway 36 and turned west. Seattle it is. The odd coincidence that I am leaving Kansas and heading to a place that dubs itself “The Emerald City” is not lost on me. There’s some potential there. If this whole new career of Writing doesn’t work out for me maybe the Emerald City will have an opening for a new Wizard. Now that could really be fun.

Happy New Year.