Nomad
Northbound train tracks in Hudson NY
Nomad
by Zachary Thacher
August 2020 — Charlotte, Vermont
There’s a parsha in the Torah — a chapter in The Five Books of Moses—where Moses lists the many places where we camped during the long haul of Exodus. The forty years of being frightened and foolish and angry and ignorant and sickened and lost and hungry and, also, unstoppable.
None of those fleeing had been to Israel. At best they knew the old stories. Most were unknowing; just packing, walking, worrying, hoping, unpacking.
And here’s the thing, the lever where the unknowing movement lifts and takes off. To make it to the promised land, to arrive safe and sound, you have to believe the journey will end well. To fulfill the mission you need faith you will arrive. It can’t be a mistake that most of the Five Books of Moses describes a journey without end. Skip Genesis and the entire Torah is a long travelogue. It starts with a slapdash liberation movement led by an inarticulate trust fund kid. It ends with what will become the most famous political speech in world history, still, to this day, perorated by an elder leader on the cusp of a land he can finally see but never touch. His long shpiel can be reduced to two instructions: be brave and be just.
Then it ends.
Still haven’t arrived.
I like to think this incompletion gives the Torah a universal message. Forget about all the theology and legalisms for a moment. Look at the story.
You’re on a trip. For it to end well, you have to continue, and to continue, you have to believe the striving is worth it. And it is in that striving that you discover meaning.
When you read this parsha — Numbers 33 in English, Matot-Massei in Hebrew — this wisdom literature that’s empowered and inspired billions and billions of people for thousands and thousand years, you’re like, um, those are A LOT of weird names. Some are familiar from earlier chapters. Some I know from a hike in the Sinai; it was sun blasted and rock strewn and the gulf of Aqaba was liquid sapphire. It gives me an idea of a desert wilderness, but no one knows the exact locations. We can only imagine what it was like, back then, with twelve tribes on the run, united in flight, in God we trust.
Adirondacks
Driving through upstate New York made me count the places I’ve stayed since leaving Manhattan. It’s been nearly a dozen different beds; feels like hundreds. All this movement in a time of stillness is as shocking and strange and liberating as you’d think.
Don’t worry. I keep my social distance. I wear a mask. I rarely go inside any structure that’s not mine. Every task ends with hand sanitizer.
Matot-Massei/Numbers 33 always, honestly, seemed kind of boring. It’s a long list of unfamiliar names of places I don’t understand. But now that I’m experiencing a journey of my own which feels so unending and strange, in the truest sense of that word, a word that’s spoken over and over in the Hebrew Bible to remind us that we were strangers once so we must always be kind, now that I’m deep into estrangement and reliant on kindness, Moses’ telling gains urgency.
Close your eyes if that helps
You’re camping outside with friends and relatives. No, not Coachella.
You rest on cushions and blankets under a dark sky strained with starlight. Dinner is finished. The children are asleep. Your tent is set up and arranged just the way you like it. Your pack animals have been fed and hobbled and softly ruminate. You’re with the adults and some of the teenagers, you can see their faces by the light of fire.
Your favorite storyteller stands and speaks. He recites the names of everywhere you have ever been since way back, since your parent’s generation left that bad place, three, no, four decades ago. It’s a long list. You’re fuzzy on the first places because you were born on the road. But eventually, as he keeps going through the names, you remember. You know where you were born. You remember playing as a kid in the next one, two, three places he mentions. That valley. That well. That spring.
Your partner next to you hmmms as she remembers the place where you met. You put your arms around each other. The storyteller says another place name. Voices across the fire sighs in sad recognition. That’s where their parents died. Another place comes up and now someone laughs, their first child was born there. Nostalgia and poignancy and regret and loss and warmth and then finally, comfort, unfurls within everyone in earshot.
Remember mid March? Everything was so scary! That was absolutely crazy. People sanitizing their groceries while other people said the disease wasn’t happening. No hand sanitizer anywhere. You felt like you were risking your life just to get gas. Remember the first time you put on a mask? It was so hot and alien and uncomfortable. So many people were dying back then, too many.
But we made it. This far at least.
From Moses with the Israelites in circa 1,500 BCE to you reminiscing with your friends yesterday, it is the telling that orders experience. It makes it safe. It makes it coherent. You get it now. You’re situated. We went from here to here to here. We went from polarized, bizarre, childish and angry responses and spitball therapeutics to what is now a nearly universal, if imperfect, acceptance. The virus is real. Covid’s not going away. Covid is a thing. It’s hard to treat when it gets bad. No one wants it. Most of us, however begrudgingly, however belatedly, will continue the same extreme measure of shutting down our world to stay safe. It’s simple: when you go outside, wear a mask.
Remember this. The chapter I’m talking about comes in B’Midbar — “In the Wildnerness” AKA The Book of Numbers. It’s the fourth of five books. It’s not in the end. That’s Dvarim, Deuteronomy.
We’re being told to remember our story while we’re still very much within the story.
Remember.
Keep going.
Empty streets and Catskill views. Hudson, NY in August 2020.
I drove on a quiet road in Columbia County, New York through pastures and dales. At the intersections of country roads farmers sold produce on long folding tables sheltering under open-sided tents. I bought plums and peaches from a young Mennonite woman standing on the edge of shade. A mango late afternoon sunlight shone on her white cap. She was chatty in her loneliness. We talked about the weather and where the fruit had grown. We smiled under our masks, I think.
Soon I accelerated to ascend a hill and with it came a view and suddenly I thought again of all the places I’ve stayed since leaving Manhattan to… where exactly? Don’t know. Somewhere safe, somewhere with people who love me and whom I love. Somewhere in nature and not on nature, if you know what i mean. I can’t describe it. I just know what it will feel like.
Hudson River, just north of Hudson, NY. August 2020.
Many of us are like this. We’re all like this. Even if you’ve been at home this entire time of Covid, even if you’ve never moved an inch as you watch your landscape constrict into a few patios and stoops, into the same street corners and repeated front lawns and one or two grocery stores and that same patch of park. If your sense of opportunity and exploration went from the entire world to a single square mile; even as you sit and read this on your phone or at your laptop, we’re all still racing through this, together. Confederated in time.
I recently said this makes us pilgrims, rocking on boats over watery depths as we escape oppression for distant shores. But pilgrims have a destination.
So now I’m thinking, we’ve drifted past that. We’ve blown off course.
It’s been long enough now that the Corona Virus Infectious Disease is not new. It’s been here. It’s not going anywhere. It’s going everywhere. Wealthy countries, and even some poorer places, have tamped down the virus to reasonably safe levels, but not here. In the USA the virus is abetted by a one-sided, fanatical, literally fatal political theology that is masterful at gaining power but which, paradoxically, makes them incapable of governance. We’ve seen this before in the early 2000s with Katrina, Iraq and Wall Street. We saw it earlier with recessions and the resurgence of massive income inequality, which is to say, massive poverty, in the 1980s. Today it’s the same guarantee of incompetence, just with higher stakes.
Racist, oligarchic climate and virus deniers don’t have solutions, they have anger and fear. Those take you far in American politics, all the way to the top, but anger and fear prevents governance. You can steal and cheat and hook up your friends, sure, that works perfectly, but you can’t lead. To govern, to manage, you have to have unconditional love for everyone, together. That takes a courage of inclusion and empathy the Republican party will never have, not until they start over again. Either that or after a lot of ugliness and destruction, the party becomes a footnote in a political science textbook. Those are their choices. Not that many Democrats don’t spend their time in power enriching the country clubs while tossing crumbs to the masses, but luckily it’s a broad party.
With America’s Republicans in power but not in charge, it’s the virus that’s calling the shots, and with the coming cold, life is going to get much worse.
So goodbye pilgrims and hello nomads. Which is depressing because at least Pilgrims have religion, but this is how it is now. We’re wandering. We’re lost. Aimless. The only thing we know for sure is that fall and winter will be heavy with death and isolation.
Put in the clutch, ease out of polemics and shift into taking stock of how one of us has made it this far during these times. Lazman ha zeh. For those who are curious, this is my shehecheyanu.
Encampments after New York March 17th 2020
After packing my car in 20 minutes and gunning through Westchester and Fairfield counties and into Massachusetts, I slept in a Best Western Hotel off a highway in Concord. Not planned. Let’s just say it was better for my friend’s family situation that I didn’t crash there while I figured out my next steps.
The night shift receptionist was a middle aged woman with a smoker’s laugh. She gave me two welcome gift bags for extra water and snacks. The small kindness meant more to me over the coming days than she may have imagined. Thank you.
Then it was on to the barn apartment in the heart of Carlisle, Massachusetts. Each week I paid the owner $300 in cash, never knowing how long I’d stay. Solitary weeks soon herded into months. The bed was so lumpy it was savage, the place had dumpster furniture and no real kitchen, but I had zero choices and made it work.
Despite my kvetching, they had to pull me out of there. Someone had rented it for May. By then I had put away winter layers and wore t-shirts and jeans. I moved to the appropriately named Spring Hill Road Airbnb In-Law Apartment on the Concord/Acton border. If Carlisle is sort of like the Berkshires, then Acton is sort of like hell. You can’t walk to any shops or services. Houses are all new McMansions or mid-century ranches. A strip mall causes Jane Jacobs to groan in Heaven each time I buy groceries from a middling market.
The apartment itself was overwhelmed by way too many overstuffed leather recliners, it had seating for at least 10, but didn’t have a table or desk for work. It was a dumping ground of old furniture, simply a space for the owner to squeeze renters with few options.
I escaped Acton for a two night interlude in an Easthampton Airbnb. No not that East Hampton. I’m talking about the outskirts of Northampton, Massachusetts near all those colleges that need to stay closed.
I was there to explore the region for a place to live. Immediately I felt in my heart what I knew in my head. I was a stranger. It would be impossible to meet new people at a time like this. But something told me to attend a special place. I turned off the highway to a dirt road. In second gear I crawled along until I parked at a boat ramp. I got out and walked down steep banks. An urge I obeyed but didn’t understand brought me to the shores of the river that carves this Pioneer Valley. It was wide and silent and coursing with blue green water.
The Connecticut River is New England’s longest river. It stretches from Quebec through a corner of Maine, it divides New Hampshire from Vermont, runs through Massachusetts and empties at Essex, Connecticut into the Long Island Sound.
My father was born by its banks in northern New Hampshire. He grew up by its shores further south in Massachusetts, in a rural hamlet where he picked Connecticut Valley tobacco leaf as an 11-year-old to survive. Feeling connected to the wide flowing waters and thinking of my father’s body coated with nicotine gave me a sense of connection, but it was remembered. It wasn’t now.
There was another interlude: three nights in Vermont when I stayed in a small outbuilding in Bristol with a mason mom and her two boys, and two nights in a Stowe motel as I realized, hey, Vermont!
There were two nights in Katie M’s chic Chelsea apartment that lay empty after she and her fiancé had fled to the Midwest. Thanks to their generosity I had a stylish place to stay — with laundry! — as I gathered with my minyan, Kol haKfar, to celebrate Shabbat.
On July 6th my Airbnb in Acton expired, thankfully. I won’t miss its 1980s sitcom furniture, its plaid curtains and Reagan-era carpeting.
Vermont off Route 7 while heading back to Charlotte. August 2020.
I packed and drove to Charlotte, Vermont. That night I unpacked into another in-law apartment similar to Acton — think old carpeting and vinyl bathroom floors, but this place contains the critical ingredient missing in Acton. Love. I moved into what can only be described as my friend’s Family Village. There are five adults here and two children, sometimes more if the neighbor drops by. I talk about Charlotte in recent essays so I’ll leave off more descriptions, click for more.
Sooner than I truly settled in, I returned to The City once again in the sweeping pendulum arcs that whoosh me back from rural life to New York in long, semi-monthly ticks of the clock. I stayed for a few nights with Darci M and her family in the New Jersey suburbs. They had kitted out a backyard tool shed into a comfortable and stylish Cabana. Think soft lighting, crisp linens, air conditioning, even snacks and water.
Darci is the older sister to Katie, the woman with the chic Chelsea apartment. Let’s agree that their entire family have been very good to me for a very long time and I’m grateful. They have kindness and taste and intelligence and humor. I’ll bring back more blueberries and maple syrup.
But then, just as I was enjoying their cabana and those snacks and their company, the pendulum reached its apogee… and sooner than I realized… it whooshed me back to the country.
As a coda, my latest fast foray from Vermont was three nights in Hudson, New York in a VRBO. The town was empty, persistent and beautiful in its own right, but mostly, spectral. You can’t walk to nature from Hudson. It was hot. The streets were blanks. All of the arts organizations had closed. Because news flash. This is a terrible time to find a new home. Yes, I’ve said that before. I’m still re-learning the lesson.
As for my VRBO rental, have you ever been tired and stressed and you finally get into bed, eager for sleep and quiet and rest? You may even let out a little hurrah! as you fall onto the mattress. It’s been a long day. You’ve showered and changed into soft pajamas, you’ve had dinner, you’ve finished your work and while there’s a twinge of worry, you’ve softened your mind. It’s late. It’s dark. Feels good to close your eyes. Then an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer thunders by your head. What the..? Another massive truck shakes the building. Then another lays on its horn and pounds the asphalt.
Turns out the bedroom faces Hudson’s truck route. Funny how the website doesn’t mention that.
A Best Western hotel room, Carlisle Barn, Acton In-Law Apartment, Bristol Outbuilding, Stowe Motel, Easthampton not The Hamptons Airbnb, a Chelsea Apartment and its sister Maplewood Cabana, a Hudson Truckstop and the Vermont Family Village. Ten places. A minyan of beds, but, alas, with only me in them.
That’ll change soon. Like George Michael said, Gotta have faith. (You didn’t think you’d get through this without an ‘80s musical reference?)
Tonight, I will sleep in a faded but entirely all mine apartment attached to an 1830s farmhouse like my attachment to this sweet family. I will sleep on a fold out futon sofa that feels as comfortable as it sounds, but it will be quiet. The Great Dipper will rise over the steel roof. The sky will be moonless as we head into the Jewish month of Elul. Friends will doze nearby.
Then a few hours after dawn we’ll be in the kitchen again and the girls will run in to announce they want to listen to the Orphan Annie soundtrack again and their parents will feed them while we talk deeply and meaningfully about the best way to coax coffee from the espresso machine. It will be warm and safe and loving and it will go on until it doesn’t.
It’s very nice in Charlotte. C’mon up!