Heartwarming story

[Texsox]

Not the Promised Land, but a land with promise

 

By Warren Smith

 

This Memorial Day, as most of the country was enjoying a long weekend, I

was driving across the country, on a long-distance road trip with my

20-year-old daughter Brittany.

 

But before I tell you that story, let me back up a bit. You see, 30 years

ago this summer - indeed, 30 years ago this very week -- in June of 1976,

I began a job at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico. You may

have heard of Philmont. Certainly if you've ever been involved in the Boy

Scouts you have, because Philmont is the largest Boy Scout Camp in the

world. Each summer, more than 25,000 Scouts and adult leaders go there,

and they are served by about 1000 seasonal staff members. Thirty years

ago, I was one of those staff members. And, for that matter, so was my

wife, Missy. That's where we met, at Philmont. And almost 10 years

later, in 1985, we worked there again as husband and wife. We were both

teachers who had our summers off, so it was also at Philmont that we

discovered that we were expecting our first child, this same Brittany.

 

This summer Brittany herself would be working at Philmont -- in exactly

the same backpacking guide job -- they're called "rangers" -- that I had

30 years ago.

 

So on Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend, Brittany and I got in her

little car at 5:30 in the morning, and started driving West. We had a

sense, as Huck Finn famously said, of "lighting out for the territory."

Robert Penn

 

Warren less famously, but more directly, said that the West is where

Americans have always gone to flee their lives, to remake themselves. To

lose themselves, and to find themselves.

 

As we turned on to Interstate 40, which for much of its way follows the

path of the famous Route 66, all the way to Santa Monica Pier on the

Pacific Ocean, Phantom Planet's "California" came up randomly on the CD

player. It's a song that many people today know as the theme for the

television program "The O.C." But, more to the point here, it's a

bittersweet song about reaching the end of the road, literally and

spiritually. "California here I come, right back where I started from."

The words are from an old "Tin Pan Alley" song, but the minor chords give

this version a new meaning. The earlier song was one that fully embraced

the idea of a Golden West. But this new version, with its minor chords,

said something different. It said this: "What you discover at the end of

this road is that there's no avoiding yourself. No matter where you go,

there you are."

 

We were not going all the way to California, but we were headed into the

Far West, ending up in Santa Fe by Sunday evening. And on this trip I

would not go all the way to Philmont, either. This summer I would not,

as Brittany would be able to do, throw away my watch and walk as I pleased

in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, named for the cleansing Blood of

Christ. For me, now, there was not enough time. I had to get back home

and get to work. Like Moses, who led his people out of bondage but did

not get to enter the Promised Land himself, so I had to return to the

captivity of work, and the tyranny of the clock. But Brittany is a part

of the Joshua generation, the generation that gets to enter the Promised

Land. At least for now.

 

So on Memorial Day Monday, the third day of this expedition into the West,

I catch a shuttle from Santa Fe to the Albuquerque airport and fly back to

the East. Brittany would drive the last two hours to Philmont on her own.

 

As I sat on the plane, literally on the runway in Albuquerque, my cell

phone rang. It was Brittany. There was excitement in her voice. "I can

see the mountains," she said, almost yelling into the phone above the road

noise and the sound of her specially burned "road trip" CD. She called

their names to me over the crackly cell phone, and I thought about how

oddly appropriate these names were for this conversation. Brittany didn't

know it, but she was describing my world at mid-life: Baldy.

Touch-me-not. The Tooth of Time.

 

The flight attendant gave me a hard look that meant I had to turn off my

"portable electronic device." So I told Brittany I loved her and hung up.

What this summer held for her I did not know. Sure, I had an inkling, but

every generation must make the journey for itself, and every journey is

different.

 

I did, though, recognize that excitement in her voice. It was the same

excitement I had, at times, heard it in my own. It was the excitement you

feel when you are at the edge of -- well, not exactly the Promised Land,

but a land of great promise.

 

And you are about to enter in.

 

Warren Smith is the publisher of "The Charlotte World." He can be reached

at [email protected]