Wandering

Not All Who Wander Are Lost; Chris Thile

One of the most satisfying trips I ever took occurred early in 2003. My family and I had convened at Mom’s place for Christmas. D. and her family had returned to their home a few days after the holiday and K. had hit the road a few days after that. I had stayed long enough to see some friends from college and to help take down the Christmas tree. After New Year’s, though, I started to think about heading back to my apartment in San Antonio, TX.

After leaving the U.S. Marine Band in November of 2002, I had heard that Jim Cullum had a piano opening in his Dixieland band down in San Antonio. So I moved for a short term down to Texas and resided in a chic apartment right down by the Riverwalk.

I realized, shortly after leaving Mom’s place in 2003, that I didn’t really need to hurry anywhere. As I recall, I actually pulled over in Sioux City, IA, to look at the map and to check my options. I looked at Nebraska and Kansas. Kansas. Kansas. Something in Kansas. It seems to me … hmmmmm. Many years before, I had read an article in the Reader’s Digest about an interesting place out in the middle of Kansas called Castle Rock. I checked the map. Yup. There in the middle of Kansas, and about three inches to the left, lay a tiny red square with the words “Castle Rock” beside it. I needed no more urging than that. One minute later, I had my route back to Texas and there were no straight lines.

I spent the first night in a small town motel in the southern part of Nebraska. And after a rousing Egg McMuffin the next morning, I headed toward that red square. The closer I got to the site, the more unsophisticated, rural, artless and unrefined the signs pointing me to the location became. Four of the last five miles of road leading to Castle Rock featured beautiful Kansas gravel. The last half of a mile of road, after the cattle grate, featured beautiful Kansas dirt, with beautiful Kansas ruts. The owner of the land must have trusted that visitors would have enough sense not to drive over the cliff at the end of the road, as there is no sign advising that they shouldn’t. There also is no sign signaling the presence of a cliff. As a matter of fact, I saw no signs, except those that proclaimed “Castle Rock” and the direction, relative to the sign, indicating its whereabouts.

I pulled up to the edge of the cliff at about noon, stumbled out of my truck, and stood dumbfounded at what lay before me: miles upon miles of barren plain to the north and east. And nobody around but me and my Durango. About a quarter of a mile in front of the face of the cliff stood Castle Rock, a limestone and chalk formation, in the shape of a castle, sitting on an ancient seabed. If I had stood at that very spot millions of years before, I would have been looking at the ocean. In the middle of Kansas. For forty-five minutes, I stood there by myself, with nobody else around for miles, drinking in the starkness, the wildness, the remoteness. And, most impressive of all, the solitude.

Close to one o’clock, I saw the cloud of beautiful Kansas dust of another Castle Rock visitor approaching, and chose to grant them the same privilege of seclusion that I had enjoyed. I headed west about thirty miles to a similar spot called Monument Rocks, an area of giant chalk pyramids, some of them seventy feet high. My Durango looked like a Matchbox Car next to these colossal formations. I moved on from there to stay overnight in Las Vegas, NM, drove through Santa Fe, rode the Sandia Peak Tramway and made a left turn at Albuquerque to drive through El Paso, TX, during rush hour. And after that I was still five hundred and fifty miles from my flat on the Riverwalk.

Chris Thile (pronounced THEE-lee) plays the mandolin like a dream and composes exceptionally creative music to feature his musical gifts. He has toured and recorded with Dolly Parton, Bela Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer. He also made up one third of the ensemble “Nickel Creek”. He plays what he likes to call bluegrass and “newgrass”. Bela Fleck features prominently in this album called “Not All Who Wander Are Lost”. I did, indeed, listen to this album during that unforgettable detour through Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. It provided fitting road trip music of a roving nature.

The title of the album is inspiring. It comes from a poem included in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy “The Lord Of The Rings, alluding to an integral part of the plot:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the askes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

My Dixieland piano playing and the Jim Cullum Band’s Dixieland playing didn’t mesh well. When the temperature began to rise to a point too high for me to bear, I loaded up the Durango and wandered in another direction. Wandered. But not aimlessly.

Credits: To the wanderer, who finds the zest for life during the journey.