November 13, 2010
Saturday

“To gallivant” is to go from place to place seeking diversion or pleasure, or to go about without useful purpose, or to gad about with the opposite sex (definitely not for a useful purpose). I first heard the term when my parents acquired a 1965 turquoise Corvair for the sole purpose of allowing me to get back and forth to my classes at Harrisburg Area Community College. “That car is not for gallivanting,” my father said one evening when I went out to buy a desk lamp and the trip took three hours, because I stopped to visit a friend.

Regular readers of this space know what I mean when I use the term “gallivant.” I’ve applied it to my trips to writers’ conferences, to residencies at cabins in the woods, to museums, to the island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides to pray (“There’s a different God in Scotland?” Ron asked), to Wyoming in 2005 simply because it was there. I gallivant to learn, to see, to clear my head. In so doing, I enact the heroine’s journey: a woman leaves home; a different woman returns. As I have said, I don’t go on vacations. I have adventures.

Sometimes, when the Gallivant is for the purpose of staying in one place for a period of weeks to write or to learn, I take a Gallivant during the Gallivant. When I was at Hambidge in Georgia in 2009 I went to church in Walhalla, South Carolina twice a week. Last week I went to Burlington for the day just for a change of scenery and purpose. Today, not only did I take a Gallivant during the Gallivant, I Gallivanted during the Gallivant that was during the Gallivant.

I set out for St. Albans, Vermont early this morning. It’s about 25 miles from Johnson, and I actually had a purpose. I wanted to go to a Weight Watchers meeting, kind of check in there, get my bearings. I’ve been walking more than I ever do at home, and rarely eating between meals (because there is nothing left out in the dining hall and it’s too much of a hassle to obtain and store and fix snacks). But I haven’t been weighing and measuring anything or making sure I get five fruits or vegetables or drinking any milk at all.

St. Albans is a typical Vermont town. The Weight Watchers meeting was listed as being at “St. Mary’s Church.” My GPS called out “arriving at destination, on right!” at a spot where there were about four churches clustered in two blocks. One was called “Immaculate Conception” parish. I figured that must be Saint Mary’s.

The WW meeting in the  parish hall was a typical WW meeting, except for the large crucifix hanging behind the presenter and the posters illustrating “Parts of the Mass.” (It was a primary grade classroom.) My news at the scale was more neutral than it was good, but it wasn’t disheartening. It was about what I had expected. I was glad I’d made the effort to go.

After I left, I drove down the hill and turned right because I couldn’t turn left. I found myself headed out of town, toward the shopping center district and what any town will call “Hamburger Row.” Oh yes, the Golden Arches called me, after three weeks of breakfasts that alternate Porridge Days with Scrambled Eggs Days and you don’t pop an English muffin into the toaster unless your fellowship extends another month or so.

When I left McDonald’s I turned north again, and presently came upon a sign that said “Canada — 15.” How can I be fifteen miles from another country and not want to go there, even for a short time? If I was willing to drive two hours to be able to say I’d been to Montana, couldn’t I go 15 miles to say I’d been to Canada this trip?

The 15 miles turned out to be more like 30, and became 40 by the time I was ready to turn around and head back to Johnson. I had with me the documentation that the handbook from VSC advised — driver’s license, proof of insurance, and my birth certificate. I didn’t realize until later that the handbook had been sent to me probably in late 2008, upon my original admission.

The drive north from St. Albans to Alburg, Vermont, was very pleasant. It took me through a wildlife reservation and along the lake. At the visitors’ center at Alburg I was shown a loop trip that would take me into Canada to the village of Noyen (mostly French-speaking), across the river to Lacolle, Quebec. south to Champlain, New York, and then east again back to Vermont.

At the border crossing just up the road from Alburg, the Canada Border Service Agent asked me a few questions. What was my purpose in visiting Canada? (Pleasure, just to see a little bit of the countryside.) Was I taking anything in that I planned to leave there? (No. This is a question about alcohol and tobacco and untaxed cars.) He asked for my papers. I explained about my faulty understanding of the requirements. (I didn’t tell him that I didn’t have a passport because when the time came to renew mine several years ago, I didn’t like the picture I had done at AAA, and I never got around to having a different picture taken, because I had no immediate need for a passport. There, now you know.) The agent assured me there would be no problem. “They’ll just ask you some questions on the other side.”

About six or eight miles into Canada I began to regret that I had not planned this trip better. I stopped at a few cemeteries, but didn’t get any good pictures because the angle of the sun was wrong for the things I wanted to photograph. I’d have bought postcards and other items, but I didn’t know what to do about money, and since I hadn’t seen a sign in English since I’d entered Canada, I was uncertain how to make myself understood.

I drove around for a while, looked at the light, breathed the air, promised myself I would return, probably in 2012 or 2013 or so, after I have my two-book deal and need another stay at VSC to finish my second novel. And then I started back.

Getting into Canada had been easy. Getting back home proved a little trickier.

There were two cars in front of me at the checkpoint. I heeded the big sign that said ARRET! (It was in the familiar red hexagon,and the information was given in English in a smaller sign as well, but you don’t have to know much French to know you are supposed to STOP and not proceed until you are directed to.)

The first car in line pulled up to the window. It was there about five minutes. The second car,which bore Canadian plates, waited a while, and then pulled up to the window. That encounter took a little longer. I hadn’t really paid attention to how one was signaled that it was all right to proceed. When the second car left, I remained where I was, about fifty feet back from the window.

After a few minutes, I became aware that the red and green lights on the canopy over the inspection window were flashing, and someone was gesturing out the window. I drove forward.

“Did you fall asleep back there?” asked the US Border Protection agent. He was way less friendly and affable than the Canadian officer.

“It wasn’t clear to me how I should know when to proceed. It said wait until you are told to proceed.”

“You proceed when the light turns green,” he said. Well then, they should put that on the sign, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

“Passport,” he said. I explained about my faulty, inadequate understanding of the regulations.

Then he started with the questions, which I answered as if I were asked these things every day. I’d been in Canada less than an hour (this sounded to me like a bad answer), I’d come just to look around (another bad answer, for sure).

“What is your purpose for being in Vermont?”

“I’m a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. I’m a fiction writer.” (That was probably the worst response.)

“I am not familiar with that place.”

He noted that the name on my birth certificate did not match the name on my driver’s license. He came out of his booth and looked at the things in the back seat of my car (a file box with my novel materials that I hadn’t even needed to take into my studio, a lap desk, a utility basket with flashlights, some bottled water, and the stuff from the front seat that I’d thrown in there to make room for Monica when we went to Hannaford last week). He did not ask why the name on my backpack (“Lynn”) did not match the name on any other document I had.

“When was the last time you were in Canada?” he asked.

“1959.”

“That was a long time ago.”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

He gave me a sheet of paper headed “NONCOMPLIANT” and told me to get a passport before my next trip.

Un Canadien Errant is a song written in 1842 about the pain of exile following the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837-1838. Un canadien errant, a wandering Canadian, banni de ses foyers, banished from his homeland, weeps one day by the river, assis au bord des flots.

I haven’t been banished from my homeland. I left willingly. It took a bit of doing to get back into Vermont, which is in the country where I claim citizenship but which is not my homeland. I’ve been gone three weeks. I sit along the flowing waters, au bord des flots of the Gihon River tonight, sighing, soupirs, if not actually weeping, larmoyant. It’s time to go home.

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