Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it last for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. — C. P. Cavafy, “Ithaka” Time to idealize another place. Road trip to Laramie to secure a flat so that Iphigenia can start law school there next year. We career through the striking Columbia River Gorge, a two-faced monster, one cool and leafy, the second desiccated and wind-blown. Then it’s up and over the Blue Mountains, where wolves haunt the slopes once more, only to find ourselves in dun and drab southern Idaho before having to traverse the north-east corner of a certain religion’s welcome mat. At last we enter the Equality State. Next day, after Evanston, the high plains! Visions of a cranky wizened Eastwood and his trusty horse on the sun-scorched steppe are marred by sc
Excerpts from bygone days abroad