Optimism is Possible

It’s Election Day. Whatever your persuasions, you know and I know the news will not all be good. So: based on my just-concluded road trip—aka four weeks and 4500 miles of unscientific research—I am here to spread a little optimism.

My husband and I left Seattle on the last Monday in September and returned on the last Monday in October. Our destination was Salida, Colorado, where our daughter just finished a five-month season with the Southwest Conservation Corps. Reason for Optimism Number One: did you know there are more than 100 Conservation Corps all over the country, employing strong young people to take care of our wilderness areas in all kinds of ways? All summer long, they build and repair trails and camps in national parks and forests. Most are paid an Americorps stipend: barely enough to get by on. So as you gnash you teeth waiting for election news, be thankful for the more than 26 thousand young adults who serve our country in this invisible way.

We took our time getting to and from Colorado. One of the things we wanted to do was explore a bit via bicycle—not in any mega-mile way, like the supertough riders we saw out on Highway 101, cycling through the California Redwoods in a driving rainstorm—but in more modest jaunts around towns we didn’t know well. Which brings me to Reason for Optimism Number Two: good, long, well-marked bike paths can now be found in places you might never have expected. Like Laramie, Wyoming. Who knew how great it would feel, after hours in the car, to get on our bikes and ride along the Laramie River while the sun set? We also biked trails in Bend and Sisters, Oregon; Boulder and Salida, Colorado; Moab, Utah; Tahoe, Sacramento, Berkeley and San Francisco. Biking is such a great way to see and experience a place you don’t know: faster than walking, slower than driving; you can get a sense of your surroundings very quickly. And it made me so happy to see—and experience for myself—safe places to ride in so many towns and cities.

Just as it made me happy to visit a surprising number of independent bookstores. We sought them out and found them, thriving, throughout the West. Yes, there are “book deserts,” where the big mega-sellers have driven out every store except the tiniest, used-books-only holes-in-the-wall. But—and here it comes, Reason for Optimism Number Three—MANY readers in the West still buy their books from lively local shops, including: Broadway Books in Portland, Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Oregon, Second Story Books in Laramie, Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Bookhaven in Salida, Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah, Book Passage in San Francisco, Northtown Books in Arcata and Gold Beach Books on the Oregon Coast. (For me, as a new author, the frosting on the cake was not only the honor and pleasure of reading from Her Beautiful Brain at two of these stores—Broadway Books and Book Passage—but also getting a friendly reception from staffers at every one of the others, who all took the time to chat and accept a review copy of my book.) 

Finally—the National Parks. Reason for Optimism Number Four: not only do we have national parks, we have 401 of them. No matter how hard we try, we’ll never run out of new national parks to visit. We went to Grand Teton for the first time this year, and it was a highlight of our trip. But we also visited some much smaller and less famous parks: Great Basin in Eastern Nevada, with its groves of ancient bristlecone pines, the longest living trees on earth; the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, nearly as deep as two Empire State buildings, swathed in an early snow flurry. And Golden Gate—yes, it’s a national park, and guess what? You can get to it via a gorgeous new bike trail along the San Francisco Bay. Maybe after picking up a good book at Book Passage.

Buy Her Beautiful Brain from the independent bookstore of your choice. Find a bookstore here. Order the Kindle version here.

Grand Tetons/Snake River IPA photo by Rustin Thompson