Travel Log

• Home
• DVDs & Videos
• Ordering
• Performances
• About Us
• Awards
• Stock Footage
• Archives
• Links & Gifts
• Wildlife Art
• 
  Wild Habitat
• 
  Travel Log

Travel Log #1

The passing scenery outside my window preserves the illusion of freedom, even though I am a prisoner in this cell on wheels… prisoner to my commitment to be 400 miles away by sundown.

I loosen my grip on the wheel, fighting off catatonia. The tires, alternately singing in their dull monotone or growling in short guttural bursts, issue warnings.

My purpose is to deliver a filmed program to an audience. But sometimes the primary objective seems to be to move your body from A to B… then to C and D… in a crazy zigzag pattern. The presentation of moving images to an audience almost seems to become incidental.

The mind plays strange tricks in this state approaching catatonia. Stimulated by the play of light on a plowed field, the temperature, or the barometric pressure, the mind runs through the stacks of my memory… tripping over odd little bits sticking out here and there. What's odd is how insignificant these memories are… not the major events you'd think would stick out.

I fall into imaginary conversations. scintillating conversations! My repartee is brilliant and devastating. My arguments are unassailable. I counter all opposing thoughts with overwhelming logic. Six cups of coffee prolong this exchange through the morning.

Coffee. It's used to wash down donuts and get that sweet taste out of your mouth. It has influenced me to visit every rest stop on every Interstate in America… almost. I may guest them all before I quit. I wonder. Is this a worthy goal in life? Something I share with truck drivers… getting to know America in a superficial way?

With all my travels to other places on the globe, I keep returning to this land I love. It really is a privilege to be skimming over the surface of the land like this… seeing so much of it. Sometimes the sheer beauty, variety and immensity of these landscapes bring tears to my eyes, and I have a powerful, compelling sense that the Earth really is my Mother. I'll be returning, ultimately, to it.

I’ll probably die trying to make a left turn while shifting down to second gear and wiping up the gloop that spilled from my Big Mac at the same time. And where the hell is my map? I forgot where I’m going.

Have a nice trip.

Trying to stay on the trail and out of the woods,

Dale Johnson Trailwood Films

Travel Log #2

I’m warm and comfortable now. But there’s noise. Cars idling. Diesel fumes. Oh! Inside a hotel. It’s dark. Let’s see... where’s the bathroom? The toilet? Uh ooh... it’s on THIS side. I’m slightly shocked to realize that I spend more nights in motels than I do in my own home.

Coffee! The first religious event of the day. I throw everything into the car. An Egg McMuffin with coffee. Two doughnuts with coffee. Some popcorn... with coffee. Breakfast lasts three hours. Lunch begins immediately.  It may be Krispy Kremes. They’re like manna from Heaven. Angels might switch sides for one. They’re giving me a little doughnut shape of my own.

I listen to two truckers on CB. Scintillating conversation. “I should be the president of the company”, I heard one say. “I do the hauling, I do the unloading, and I fill out all the paperwork. What’s left for him to do?” The other agrees. I’d better switch to radio.

Wanna hear sports? NO. Country-Western? No. Russian Limberbrain? No. I crave information. NPR. But the station fades.

What state am I driving in? Am I supposed to be here? It’s my third state today.

The mind roams. I remember that I used to wonder what it would be like to be a grown man. I wondered about that until I was 50... and then I thought, "well to hell with it. I'll never know."

I’m thinking I’m a propertied man. I have property all over America... from coast to coast. Must be worth a modest fortune by now. Stuff I’ve left in hotel rooms and auditorium stages. I wish it wasn’t such a regular feature of my travels. It’s like when you spit your gum in the parking lot... and then you step in it. Sometimes you feel it only happens to you. Because when someone else spits gum in the parking lot, you’re the one who steps in it too.

A young man pulls up next to me in the parking lot as I sit eating a Whopper in my car. (It is a glamorous life after all.) He doesn’t get out of his car and after a few minutes I glance over to see him sitting and staring ahead, slowly stroking his chin. Troubles I guess. I can’t help but wonder how many millions there are who would trade places with him... their problems for his. Like those Egyptian farmers I’ve met, who earn maybe $300 in a year. Men who’ll never even ride in a car, much less own one.

My life collides with trucks, truckers, and the trucking industry (not literally... at least not yet). They interest me. Most of these are honest Joes, trying to earn a living for their families.

But there’s a truck about 12 feet from my rear bumper now as I drive at 70 mph. I wonder if the driver hates me for being too slow... for being old... for being alive? An oversight he’s about to correct!

My mind grinds on... like the wheels beneath me, pounding against the pavement, trying to break it down.

“When an 18-wheeler passes over any given point on the highway, that exerts pressure on the pavement equal to 33,000 cars passing over it,” I heard a highway engineer in Wisconsin say. I don’t know how that’s measured, but I have no other data to refute the idea. Sometimes I see trucks with 42 wheels! I wonder what they carry.

“The interstate highways would last for 100 years without repair if the traffic were autos only”, the engineer says. Wow. Eighty percent of freight is carried by trucks... four million of them today. Twenty percent is carried by rail. Switch that around and there’d be a lot less diesel fumes at the motel. Which is where we started.

Trying to stay on the trail and out of the woods,

Dale Johnson Trailwood Films

• Explore our titles

• Back to Top