Rafael Alvarez, The Examiner
2008-08-10 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

Susan Walker spent seven weeks driving from Hollywood, Calif., to New London, N.H., over the summer of 2005 with a rescued West Highland Terrier named Oscar riding shotgun in her 1999 Toyota Camry.

Of course she thought of John Steinbeck, who in 1960 toured the U.S. with a French poodle — Charley — to rediscover a nation he’d captured 20 years earlier in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

The journey resulted in the road trip classic “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” published in 1962, six years before the Nobel laureate’s death.

“I read [Charley] in high school back in the ’70s and I read it again just before I took the trip,” said Walker, whose journey also embraced elements of Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again,” in that the destination was an extended stay with her parents after living apart from them for 30 years.

The route was selected in standard fashion: places that had to be seen — the Abiquiu, N.M., home of Georgia O’Keeffe — combined with towns where a relative or friend could put her up for a night or two.

Along the way, Walker — an art historian — allowed herself to be moved by the natural beauty of North America and listened to Miles Davis and the “Power of Myth” interviews between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell.

From L.A., Walker hit Sedona, Ariz., visited a lavender farm called Los Poblanos outside of Albuquerque that flooded her with thoughts of Matisse; stayed with cousins from Baltimore — Tom Green and family — in Vail, Colo., and then rolled west on Interstate 70 through Kansas.

“I couldn’t believe the vastness,” said Walker of the Sunflower State. “The flat vastness ...”

From Kansas City, Mo., she dipped down to Springfield, Ill., to take in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum on North Sixth Street before hopping on I-64 east into Kentucky and a few days on a bluegrass horse farm.

From there it was north through West Virginia, into Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell for the first time — “so small,” she said, echoing what everyone says on glimpsing the cracked icon of 1776 — and then straight up I-95 to the Puritan pastures of her native New England.

“The trip taught me that I could do anything,” said Walker, who found Mom and Dad waiting for her when she pulled into their driveway.

joad@alvarezfiction.com