Phil Cousineau - The Book of Roads: Travel Stories from Michigan to Marrakech

The Book OF Roads

A Life Made from Travel

The Book OF Roads

A Life Made from Travel

Stories and photographs by

PHIL COUSINEAU

Foreword by

LARRY HABEGGER

Text and photographs copyright 2015, 2000 by Phil Cousineau.

All rights reserved. except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by Viva editions, an imprint of Start Midnight, LLC, 375 Hudson Street, Twelfth Floor, New York, New York 10014.

Printed in the United States.

Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink

Cover photograph: iStockphoto

Text design: Frank Wiedemann

Second Edition.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Trade paper ISBN : 978-1-63228-019-0

E-book ISBN : 978-1-63228-025-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

First edition published by Sisyphus Press.

Phil Cousineau wishes to acknowledge the following publishers of the stories included in this volume: Journey Magazine: Sudden Chartres, The Marrakesh Way, and The Galloping; Fan Magazine: The Splintered Night, Playing Catch in the Dark, and Reading Box Scores with Pythagoras; Conari Press: Bach in Brazil and The Marrakesh Way from Prayers for Healing; Harper San Francisco: Blue Mosque Reverie from Prayers at 3 A.M.; Conari Press: Sudden Chartres from The Art of Pilgrimage; Harper Collins: The Gift of Bread from Prayers for a Thousand Years; Reputation Books: The Marrakech Way and The Bazaar Request, from Vignettes and Postcards from Morocco; Viva editions: The Night I Drove Kerouac Home from Burning the Midnight Oil; Snicker-doodle Press: The Night I Drove Kerouac Home from Jan Kerouac; and Travelers Tales: The Magicians of Prague, from Prague and The Oldest Road in the World from The Best Travel Writing: 2006.

ITINERARY

F OREWORD
F ROZEN F OOTSTEPS AND S HARED R OADS

WHEN I WAS A KID growing up in Minnesota, I loved walking in a fresh winter snow in my buckled rubber boots and snow pants, tromping through city parks, across frozen lakes, and into deep woods. The biting cold, glowering winter sky, or even heatless sunshine on a below-zero day couldnt suppress my pleasure. Id march along, kicking snow forward with every step, and pause from time to time to look back at where Id been. The trail of footsteps in the snow marked my passage. I knew they were my steps alone.

I didnt realize it at the time, but my impulse to look back in admiration at my trail suggested a broader desire to leave a mark. In my childs mind, those footsteps were visible proof that I had been there, just as the rabbit tracks and squirrel prints showed me what animals had been out foraging since the snow had stopped falling. But I learned later that this impulse to leave a mark walks hand-in-hand with the desire to see where youve been and to tell others about it, whether to impart wisdom, share what matters to you, or simply entertain.

We are all storytellers, and for me, the roots of my storytelling stretch back to those winter ramblings as a boy. But why is this important? Why does it matter where weve been and what weve done, seen, and experienced?

Phil Cousineau, in The Book of Roads, goes a long way toward explaining that. He travels down one road and up another, chronicling life in our time with a poets grace and filmmakers vision. His travels take him from the rough streets of Detroit to the stony paths of Connemara, from Rumis tomb to Chichn Itz. He goes with a hunger for knowledge and a thirst for connection, to see the long thread of human history in the world around him and the earthy wisdom of shepherds and touts and countless other souls who share these roads with us.

By taking us along, revealing what he learned simply by showing us what he saw and felt and lived, Phil grants us a new perspective on our lives and world. We follow his lead and discover new connections with people and places and reflect on our own experiences so the tapestries of our lives extend beyond their usual borders and we are made richer for it.

We are here now. This is our world, our time. When we speak to each other, entire universes open up.

Thanks to Phil, I can look back on those childhood tracks in the snow and see that they were the beginning of something bigger. His stories have helped me understand that leaving a trail, making a mark, sharing our own hard-won wisdom helps create the human story and is vital to our shared history.

We all lean on each other. We are all connected. And with Phil as our guide, we see farther and deeper, and walk with a lighter tread down these roads, one step at a time.

Larry Habegger

Executive Editor, Travelers Tales Books

I

Life is a journey, the universe an inn.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA

What can we do?

We were born with the Great Unrest.

CARIBOU ESKIMO TO KNUD RASMUSSEN

Man, is the past a long and twisty road.

SATCHEL PAIGE

C ONESTOGA W AGONS

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1956. The snowdrifts pile up against our small brick house, impossibly white, rising with the moon, and shrouding the cars in the street. The wind bends the evergreen trees in the front yard. The cold night leaves frost feathers on the windowpanes.

I am four years old. My family gathers around the Christmas tree that we cut down at a tree farm out near Ann Arbor. The silver tinsel shimmers, the crisscrossing strings of popcorn smell fresh and salty, and the hand-me-down ornaments that came all the way from Ottawa glitter and glow in the reflection of the green and red lights.

Its time for the presents. My heart is beating jackrabbit fast.

My Grandpa Louis LaChance gets down on all fours on the living room carpet and offers me a firm man-to-man handshake, my hand disappearing in his. I notice the long gray hairs on the back of his hand, and then something cool against my palm. He has slipped me a silver dollar, telling me to look at the date. I try to read the numbers, and he helps me: 1896, he says proudly. Its a grand flourish, more for my mother than me. I can tell by the way he looks at her, pleadingly, as if asking for forgiveness for hurting her feelings in some way Im too young to figure out. How could I have possibly understood what it felt like for her to lose her own mother in childbirththe very act of bringing her into this worldand how he blamed her and asked his sister to raise her?