The truth is, almost everywhere I go the people I meet are truly, sincerely, good and honest souls. In some cosmic formulation that even Bonnie Raitt sang about (“Whether your sunglasses are off or on/You only see the world you make”) and, come to think of it, Rickie Lee Jones chimed in too (“the world you make inside your head. that’s the one you see around you, that’s what I said…”) (Really, come to think of it, most of my pop/rock gods and goddesses have taught this same lesson)… it seems there is a general consensus that positive thinking creates positive experiences.

I believe this. I believe that people are good, too, because they demonstrate this to me all the time, like when my car was broken into twice in one week back home in New York City. Yeah, yeah, that sucked but, wait!! Someone found my registration mixed in with the broken glass in the street and took the time to mail it back to me! The two-time window-smashing bummer of a human being who had so messed up that week was easily forgotten in the ecstasy of moral triumph I felt, finding that registration in the post box.

However: Road tripping with my dog in search of some of the saddest parts of our country, my focus is actually not on positive goodness, but on desperation and/or plain old despair. So the world I see is the world…I…make in my mind and witness and then wish I hadn’t conjured up, basically. As if the sad truth of the world is all my fault. (Maybe it is…?)

On a trail in a large, beautiful park just outside downtown Rockford, Illinois, I took Colby for a big walk before doing a few laps of the main road to get a long run in. Great park: long green lawn rolling off to, apparently, a reservoir–though I never saw one. I did see lush woods and patches of re-established prairie grass around bubbling brooks that here and there pooled up deep enough for a dog to splash into (though Colby really just likes to stand at the edge of the water and drink it). There were some clues to a less happy reality there too, though. First, it seemed odd to me that the park was so empty on a gorgeous fall Saturday. But, maybe everyone was busy at home, reading. Yeah, that’s it probably. Some of the nicer houses of Rockford back up to that park, so possibly looking at it is enough for those who know the place is there.

Next clue: there was a large gate with a sign on it that said it would be used to lock off the nature center where the children’s programs run during certain days and hours in the summer. Is it really necessary to protect the children by gating off the road that leads to them? Well perhaps I was reading into it; perhaps they have big fuzzy animals as part of a petting zoo that they are trying to keep corralled in there. Sure. Okay.

Now, as for the series of rust-bucket cars that came and went in the upper parking area with people sitting in the front seat who never got out but who ducked down furtively now and then and, after awhile, just sat there leaning back with their eyes closed…well, what I have to say about that is, when I was a teenager, people used to go to the parks to do drugs, but, they tended to sit in a circle in the grass playing their guitars while doing it. It was really a more innocent time.

Yes, the world has definitely changed, but that’s what I’ve come out here to witness. So I don’t just lock my door and stay home, but when I walk my dog in places where I’m not entirely confident about the mix of people, I try not to end up anywhere too lonely. On a path in the park in Rockford, I did wonder if I should turn back when I came across a thin, nervous-looking man and a dog larger than both Colby and me, but my faith in people won over. Besides, there were other people walking the trail; there are still plenty of people, everywhere I go, who are enjoying the world despite the honest sense that something has gone terribly wrong in it, and we seem more or less to be looking out for each other.

“You don’t look like you’re from around here,” the man said.

“Oh?” Should I confess that I’m not? Would that make me too vulnerable? The answer is to stick to monosyllables and smile.

“Nice dog,” he said.

“Yup,” I answered. And later, in answer to another question, “I’m doing some travel writing.”

“Oh! I write too…”

And he told me that he wrote about his struggles with bipolar disorder, something that too many people I have known have also struggled with. “I don’t mean to scare you,” he said. “But it was some pretty scary stuff that happened to me.”

“Hey, writing is the way to get through it,” I said, having written my way out of some deep madness myself at least once in my life. Then I snapped Colby’s leash on, and we left. Because I thought we really had to; because there was no sense in staying in a spot where even the person I was speaking too acknowledged that the rational response would be fear.

I don’t fear the world, actually. This is largely because I was born with a freakishly depleted store of foresight; I have tried to learn to look as far ahead as I need to but I have never seen ahead to the reasons that make some actions a bad idea. And it is my lack of fear that lets me do something like haul my dog and trailer across the country to begin with; and it was the honest-to-god good people who stopped in Rockford to help me when my trailer bounced off its hitch in the middle of the road…(thank you Debbie Lynn! Thank you, anonymous man!)

Still, smart money hedges a little bit–and so I hedge, if only to acknowledge that in this world, there are some deep pockets of darkness and it’s a good idea not to think you already know exactly where they are. And so, too, I have decided to acknowledge a suggestion my father made a few weeks ago and change the tag line on this blog which, until today, read “One woman, one dog, one scamp, keep moving.” Changed. Done. And we roll along.