"It’s them, and it's me, and there is no right side of history, there is no we the people, and it could just as easily be you." The connection, the witness -- this has value and impact. This is what we can do as writers. And it may be so little, but that's not "that is less a reflection of these people, these places, their stories, than it is a reflection of the failure of a nation to know where value lies." Thank you.
Good god, Marya, this whole thing was amazing but that last section- your descriptions of all the people- I want to compare it to the build up before an orgasm but I really don't know how that will go over here so I'm just going to pull from my weirdly specific life experience instead and say it was like waiting for a whale to surface. The focus, the anticipation, th scanning and searching and then BAM that last sentence was the spout. I want to point at it and announce, 'There it is!" Which is to say, I got chills.
Kendall, you are such an absolute joy - and who would be so stuffy as to pretend they don't like the first metaphor just fine? I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have your ear, and to have you here. xo
As a seven year nomad, I have been in this Strerch of road that you describe, and I can verify that it is, indeed; the worst stretch of road on earth. If it isn’t the worst, it is a damn close second.
And you perfectly capture the way some people from small towns no one has ever heard of (I’m from one such town) feel, unseen and unheard by the rest of the country, discounted and forgotten. Only remembered when the electoral college comes into play and shocks everyone into remembering….. oh ya, there is someone out there….
Paula! Seven years on what begins to seem like one endless stretch of road - you are a mighty soul, and I'm lucky to share that road with you. Thank you for letting me know that the towns, the people, the worlds I try to describe are recognizable to you. xo
"Because it's all the same story. It's all the same traveler, same road. Because it's never just my story. It's never just me." :sigh: One of my most persistent wishes is that this was an easier concept to grasp. that there is no us/them, that no matter how hard we've worked, or how many degrees we've amassed, or the multitudes of employees working beneath us, or the size of our bank account, our house, our rig, our flat screen -- it nearly always comes down to the same small set of shared values and the roll of a dice. The horizon is always everything that isn't here. Getting there, mostly luck.
You MUST start an essay with "The horizon is always everything that isn't here." I want to read that essay. Please write it!! And thank you so much, Elizabeth - it's one of my persistent wishes as well.
Dear Marya….Wow….fabulous writing….where have I been?? You took me there to the America I don’t know but always imagined through the road trips in movies and the like. Thanks for it…have you got a book list of your own writing? I’m curious and interested to read more…
Thank you very much for your message….I’ll certainly be checking it out ….thanks again. I was very drawn to your writing today….it makes me want to get on a plane and start the adventure…!! Thx.
Win! Thank you so much - I'm glad you're here now! I do have several books out, but they're from another era of my work - my next book comes out in January 2027, I'm thrilled to say, and it focuses on exactly the subject you describe - the America I'm finding out here. Please, dig through what I've written here in the past year or so, and let me know your thoughts!
If that's America's worst stretch, US 93 between Phoenix and Vegas is a very close second. NEVER go there. Stiil, I enjoyed your drive. If only from my desk.
Eastern Wyoming isn't called "The High Lonesome" for nothing. Thanks for taking me back there. Even if it did remind me of Rock Springs - the town that looks like it was thrown out the open door of an airplane.
LOVE your second person, present tense. Immediate. Unforgiving. Relentless clarity.
The second person, present tense does its best to keep us in the right here, right now, doesn't it? The Lonesome Highway indeed - and your line!! "the town that looks like it was thrown out the open door of an airplane" - you'd better write the piece that comes after that!
As I listen to your words, pausing the audio now and then to read the beauty of your words, I realize that I would know your voice anywhere now. Despite having met you only here, in Stacklandia, it is familiar and rich in style. I can imagine standing beside you in line for the greasy hamburger and fries, taking in every detail of humanity as you wait.
Yes, it has value, they have value and you have value.
You’ve impacted me profoundly with those details. You repaint my own experience of the Badlands and the hours of sticking to the seat, as a newlywed in an uncooled black Toyota truck mid July. That truck was more like a tonka toy beside the semis than something you’d call a real truck in Wyoming.
Every time I listen and read your words, you are valued. As I write, you are valued. I’m not a scholar nor a published author, or even a former English major working on her MFA.. nah.
I’m a writer in progress who writes as she thinks.
I grab a sentence each time that I reread and hold in my mind for a while.. this time it’s: “chasing a storm that gathers itself into folds and fistfuls of clouds across the sky above Wyoming's vast open swath of earth.” Fistfuls of clouds..
you inspire, you inform, you teach, you describe, you paint pictures with your words. Its very valuable, dear Marya. Thank you.
"I'm a writer in progress who writes as she thinks" < me too. ;) I love having you here, Tey (though I DO wish my autocorrect would refrain from correcting your name incorrectly), and I love knowing which sentence grabs you - even more, I love knowing where the places I go and the stories I tell take someone else. Thank you for your generosity, as always. xoxo
As I read this, I remembered traveling to the Badlands, SD with my family when I was only ten or eleven years old--summer road trip "out west," we said, because we are from Indiana, where miles of cornfields and soy farms stretch over flat, spacious land.
Speaking of the Midwest, are you planning to travel this way? I know Indiana seems like a flyover state to 99% of the population in the US, but really, it is quite beautiful. And some of us here are very hospitable. I would love to host you! I mean that, sincerely.
My husband has always wanted to move to Wyoming, and if I can't eventually live in the Smoky Mountains--which has always, always felt like home--then I would settle for Wyoming. Maybe settle isn't quite the word, because I love the feral land there.
What I want is to be free. Isn't that true for us all?
It is, it is. Thank you, Jeannie, for your generosity, and I get through Indiana now and again - like Kansas, many roads lead through it! I love hearing that South Dakota feels "out west" from the vantage point where you began - it's such a good reminder, as someone from the west coast, that "out east" is just as much somebody else's up north, or down south, or... so good to have you here!
Thank you for this. For two reasons: 1 - that you acknowledged how I am feeling, and that is that we the people have no impact. We can take small actions, but they mean nothing to the powers. And 2 - that you wrote about the nobodys of the world. I have long felt that I am amazing...but I am nobody. I will never do anything that will be famous or powerful or make the news. And I keep trying to reconcile how that is okay. I blame my mom - she always told me I was special. Lol. I keep trying to write about the nobodys, but your words are so much better. Thank you.
Reba, thank you so much for this note, and for your generous support! It helps me, too, to hear that acknowledging the plain truth of what I see or feel lets someone else know they're not alone in what they feel and see - I find it draining to pretend, and unproductive to gussy things up as better or more hopeful than they are. I do feel there's utility in recognizing simply what is - like the fact that we are all nobody, in deep and important ways - and it makes it possible to reconcile and embrace that as (I believe) even better than ok. Thank you.
If you look up Muddy Gap on Google Maps, the photo it shows is that gas station.
I just want to let you know that your work observing and documenting the people on the wrong side of the other continental divide has both value and impact. Thank you.
Wow, Marya. I’m so glad I read this beautiful piece. The passion and power and clarity of it will inspire how I approach my writing here on Substack. I’m grateful…
Bill, as I said just a moment ago on your post (YOU GUYS - are you reading @BILLGULLO at Storytellers Social Club? DO - this guy's a master of storycraft, and if you get a chance, you should take a class from him - I just did and damn I'm glad), I'm thrilled we've crossed paths and I can't wait to move this work ahead.
Thank you Marya. Just another stunning piece that articulates something I've been feeling as well:
They are gestures, I said. That doesn't render them worthless; that doesn't mean that what they are intended to express isn't important. It means their value inheres in what they do for the individual.
As such, they have value, of course - actions of protest, expressions of dissent. But value is distinct from impact. They have value largely as mechanisms of reassurance: We the people still exist. We the people hold at least some few common beliefs. We the people believe in the greater good. We the people take comfort in the shared belief that we are on the right side of history.
I so appreciate this, Sybil - as you know, I am a great admirer of your mind and work, and it means a lot to know that this piece resonates with you. Many thanks.
Well, THAT got under my skin, and all through my hair. I can smell these places, see these people. “Godforsaken” is not the word, but there’s been a whole lot of forsaking going on.
"It’s them, and it's me, and there is no right side of history, there is no we the people, and it could just as easily be you." The connection, the witness -- this has value and impact. This is what we can do as writers. And it may be so little, but that's not "that is less a reflection of these people, these places, their stories, than it is a reflection of the failure of a nation to know where value lies." Thank you.
Jan, you of all people are a master of observation, and I believe you when you tell me that witness in itself has its worth. Thank you. xo
Good god, Marya, this whole thing was amazing but that last section- your descriptions of all the people- I want to compare it to the build up before an orgasm but I really don't know how that will go over here so I'm just going to pull from my weirdly specific life experience instead and say it was like waiting for a whale to surface. The focus, the anticipation, th scanning and searching and then BAM that last sentence was the spout. I want to point at it and announce, 'There it is!" Which is to say, I got chills.
Kendall, you are such an absolute joy - and who would be so stuffy as to pretend they don't like the first metaphor just fine? I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have your ear, and to have you here. xo
I don't know what I was thinking - this os obviously an unstuffy orgasm inclusive community! Thanks, Marya. There's nowhere I'd rather be.
hahahaaa!! then we're building the community right!! xo
I love your use of the second person.
As a seven year nomad, I have been in this Strerch of road that you describe, and I can verify that it is, indeed; the worst stretch of road on earth. If it isn’t the worst, it is a damn close second.
And you perfectly capture the way some people from small towns no one has ever heard of (I’m from one such town) feel, unseen and unheard by the rest of the country, discounted and forgotten. Only remembered when the electoral college comes into play and shocks everyone into remembering….. oh ya, there is someone out there….
Paula! Seven years on what begins to seem like one endless stretch of road - you are a mighty soul, and I'm lucky to share that road with you. Thank you for letting me know that the towns, the people, the worlds I try to describe are recognizable to you. xo
We are the lucky ones, my friend. 💖 Not everyone is so privileged as we are to live life in the road, so free and happy.
we are indeed, lucky and privileged and free - xo
Poignant, powerful and useful.
Useful - for some reason that feels particularly good today. Thank you!!
"Because it's all the same story. It's all the same traveler, same road. Because it's never just my story. It's never just me." :sigh: One of my most persistent wishes is that this was an easier concept to grasp. that there is no us/them, that no matter how hard we've worked, or how many degrees we've amassed, or the multitudes of employees working beneath us, or the size of our bank account, our house, our rig, our flat screen -- it nearly always comes down to the same small set of shared values and the roll of a dice. The horizon is always everything that isn't here. Getting there, mostly luck.
Your words are resonant and, yes, impactful.
You MUST start an essay with "The horizon is always everything that isn't here." I want to read that essay. Please write it!! And thank you so much, Elizabeth - it's one of my persistent wishes as well.
Wow.
"I laughed. 'Neither,' I said. 'I'm just trying to make it to the end of this life alive."
Indeed -- you and me both, and everybody else as well.
Beautiful piece.
Thank you, Michael. Can't wait to see you.
Dear Marya….Wow….fabulous writing….where have I been?? You took me there to the America I don’t know but always imagined through the road trips in movies and the like. Thanks for it…have you got a book list of your own writing? I’m curious and interested to read more…
Thank you very much for your message….I’ll certainly be checking it out ….thanks again. I was very drawn to your writing today….it makes me want to get on a plane and start the adventure…!! Thx.
Win! Thank you so much - I'm glad you're here now! I do have several books out, but they're from another era of my work - my next book comes out in January 2027, I'm thrilled to say, and it focuses on exactly the subject you describe - the America I'm finding out here. Please, dig through what I've written here in the past year or so, and let me know your thoughts!
If that's America's worst stretch, US 93 between Phoenix and Vegas is a very close second. NEVER go there. Stiil, I enjoyed your drive. If only from my desk.
Eastern Wyoming isn't called "The High Lonesome" for nothing. Thanks for taking me back there. Even if it did remind me of Rock Springs - the town that looks like it was thrown out the open door of an airplane.
LOVE your second person, present tense. Immediate. Unforgiving. Relentless clarity.
The second person, present tense does its best to keep us in the right here, right now, doesn't it? The Lonesome Highway indeed - and your line!! "the town that looks like it was thrown out the open door of an airplane" - you'd better write the piece that comes after that!
Writing a truthful piece about Rock Springs would probably get me arrested at the border, should I ever attempt it again.
"The High Lonesome", not "The Lonesome Highway." there are plenty of those, but only one HL. Just sayin'. :)
When you use YOU, I get to be in the story! And your paragraph on the divides of this country beginning “I wonder…”— brilliant observation.
An overall YAY🎉
That's my hope - and of course, you ARE in the story, we all are - so good to see you, Sara!!
As I listen to your words, pausing the audio now and then to read the beauty of your words, I realize that I would know your voice anywhere now. Despite having met you only here, in Stacklandia, it is familiar and rich in style. I can imagine standing beside you in line for the greasy hamburger and fries, taking in every detail of humanity as you wait.
Yes, it has value, they have value and you have value.
You’ve impacted me profoundly with those details. You repaint my own experience of the Badlands and the hours of sticking to the seat, as a newlywed in an uncooled black Toyota truck mid July. That truck was more like a tonka toy beside the semis than something you’d call a real truck in Wyoming.
Every time I listen and read your words, you are valued. As I write, you are valued. I’m not a scholar nor a published author, or even a former English major working on her MFA.. nah.
I’m a writer in progress who writes as she thinks.
I grab a sentence each time that I reread and hold in my mind for a while.. this time it’s: “chasing a storm that gathers itself into folds and fistfuls of clouds across the sky above Wyoming's vast open swath of earth.” Fistfuls of clouds..
you inspire, you inform, you teach, you describe, you paint pictures with your words. Its very valuable, dear Marya. Thank you.
"I'm a writer in progress who writes as she thinks" < me too. ;) I love having you here, Tey (though I DO wish my autocorrect would refrain from correcting your name incorrectly), and I love knowing which sentence grabs you - even more, I love knowing where the places I go and the stories I tell take someone else. Thank you for your generosity, as always. xoxo
Marya,
As I read this, I remembered traveling to the Badlands, SD with my family when I was only ten or eleven years old--summer road trip "out west," we said, because we are from Indiana, where miles of cornfields and soy farms stretch over flat, spacious land.
Speaking of the Midwest, are you planning to travel this way? I know Indiana seems like a flyover state to 99% of the population in the US, but really, it is quite beautiful. And some of us here are very hospitable. I would love to host you! I mean that, sincerely.
My husband has always wanted to move to Wyoming, and if I can't eventually live in the Smoky Mountains--which has always, always felt like home--then I would settle for Wyoming. Maybe settle isn't quite the word, because I love the feral land there.
What I want is to be free. Isn't that true for us all?
It is, it is. Thank you, Jeannie, for your generosity, and I get through Indiana now and again - like Kansas, many roads lead through it! I love hearing that South Dakota feels "out west" from the vantage point where you began - it's such a good reminder, as someone from the west coast, that "out east" is just as much somebody else's up north, or down south, or... so good to have you here!
Oh my gosh, you're so right! South Dakota is west for me, east for you. It's all a matter of perspective.
Please let me know if you ever make it this far east, to Indiana. I'll be waiting.
Thank you for this. For two reasons: 1 - that you acknowledged how I am feeling, and that is that we the people have no impact. We can take small actions, but they mean nothing to the powers. And 2 - that you wrote about the nobodys of the world. I have long felt that I am amazing...but I am nobody. I will never do anything that will be famous or powerful or make the news. And I keep trying to reconcile how that is okay. I blame my mom - she always told me I was special. Lol. I keep trying to write about the nobodys, but your words are so much better. Thank you.
Reba, thank you so much for this note, and for your generous support! It helps me, too, to hear that acknowledging the plain truth of what I see or feel lets someone else know they're not alone in what they feel and see - I find it draining to pretend, and unproductive to gussy things up as better or more hopeful than they are. I do feel there's utility in recognizing simply what is - like the fact that we are all nobody, in deep and important ways - and it makes it possible to reconcile and embrace that as (I believe) even better than ok. Thank you.
If you look up Muddy Gap on Google Maps, the photo it shows is that gas station.
I just want to let you know that your work observing and documenting the people on the wrong side of the other continental divide has both value and impact. Thank you.
John, I freaking adore you. Thank you for showing up, for writing, for reading, for looking at the Google Map, and for letting me know. xo
Wow, Marya. I’m so glad I read this beautiful piece. The passion and power and clarity of it will inspire how I approach my writing here on Substack. I’m grateful…
Bill, as I said just a moment ago on your post (YOU GUYS - are you reading @BILLGULLO at Storytellers Social Club? DO - this guy's a master of storycraft, and if you get a chance, you should take a class from him - I just did and damn I'm glad), I'm thrilled we've crossed paths and I can't wait to move this work ahead.
Thanks Marya! More to come
Thank you Marya. Just another stunning piece that articulates something I've been feeling as well:
They are gestures, I said. That doesn't render them worthless; that doesn't mean that what they are intended to express isn't important. It means their value inheres in what they do for the individual.
As such, they have value, of course - actions of protest, expressions of dissent. But value is distinct from impact. They have value largely as mechanisms of reassurance: We the people still exist. We the people hold at least some few common beliefs. We the people believe in the greater good. We the people take comfort in the shared belief that we are on the right side of history.
I so appreciate this, Sybil - as you know, I am a great admirer of your mind and work, and it means a lot to know that this piece resonates with you. Many thanks.
Well, THAT got under my skin, and all through my hair. I can smell these places, see these people. “Godforsaken” is not the word, but there’s been a whole lot of forsaking going on.
There is so much forsaking, yes. Rona, thank you - your work is so powerful, I'm honored to know that some of mine reached you.
Yours is among the most powerful voices here.
Grateful for this, and for your voice as well.