The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut Page A

the sort of life we aspired to wasn’t that far removed from their own. The frontier was recent history here. Many of them had spent their childhoods in the bush. We struck a chord.
    Being respected by them was important to us. That flattered them and they loved us for it. Not many people gave a shit about what they thought. We had use for lots of their experience and skill, too.
Everyone loves to be a teacher, especially of some skill he thought no one would ever want again. We were willing pupils.
     
    UNFINISHED BUSINESS. The Pennsylvania dope bust had seemed absurd enough when it was happening. It was so predictable, so pointless. I could hardly keep from saying “Come on now, I mean really, isn’t this a bit much?” And now, four thousand miles away, next to a whole other ocean in a different country, it was hard to believe that Suchadolski and company were really on the same planet we were.
    I considered not going. The idea of marijuana and mescaline being illegal was absurd enough. The idea that Virginia and I were supposed to travel several thousand miles to see whether or not they would put me in jail for possession of less than an ounce of dope and a few pills was too ridiculous. I wasn’t worried about conviction—poor Suchadolski had made every procedural error in the book—but the idea of going all that way just to get let off on a technicality bothered me almost as much as the possibility of doing time. And what was the worst thing that could happen to me for not showing? I’d be in big trouble if I ever got picked up in Pennsylvania for anything, and I’d forfeit my bond. It was laughable.
    There was lots to do at the farm. Getting the roof done before the rains started was the most urgent. But trial time was coming up, and Virge and I took a ride on the Trans-Canadian Railway.
     
    Early September ’70, just before getting on the train heading East: “I feel better than I’ve ever felt about life.”
    I meant it. We could afford to be philosophical about the trial and any other unpleasantness that came up. We had our alternative, the farm, our hot-air balloon. We could stand a brief descent to where those funny little antlike things scurried around. If it got to be a drag, all we had to do to get our altitude back was cut away a sandbag or
two. They couldn’t really hurt us. We were facing this last hassle out of politeness and not because they had any real power over us any more.
    Vincent had left for California a week earlier. From there he was heading back East to pick up some stuff. Our plan was for him to meet us on the Cape. We’d spend a few days at his place in Vermont before driving back to the farm with him.
    The train ride was a gas. Watching the deer and the antelope play, cruising effortlessly across the continent through some of the most beautiful wilderness anywhere. We brought our own food along—crunchy granola, super pumpernickel, cheese, nuts, fruit, salami, peanut butter—enough to share with other people. It took three and a half days to Toronto. Every day at sunset we’d go into the bar car and have a couple of beers.
    It would have been awful to go back having washed out. If we hadn’t found any land. But we had found land. Not just any land, really spectacular land. We returned with our heads high. The trial was just a silly interlude. Then I could get back to the good stuff, the real stuff. I had beaten a bigger, far more terrifying rap than the one I had to face in Greensburg, Pa.
    From Toronto we took a buff to Bussalo and tried to get hold of Steve and Sandy. The phone number and addresses they had given us didn’t work. We sent them a “Fuck, where the fucking shit fuck are you guys,” etc., etc., letter scrawled on a napkin giving them some addresses and numbers where they could get hold of us while we were East. Got on a pitt to Bussburgh and called a girl I had gone to elementary school with who had told my mother that she and her husband could put us up for