Synaptic

Writing Objective: Write something that explores your understanding of the cross cultural experience.

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I first read of England in James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small. I was twelve or thirteen. Herriot’s England was for me the only England, and I held onto images of stone walls and dazzling green horizons and most importantly, amiably quiet farmers. For years I immersed myself in the Yorkshire Dales by reading and rereading Herriot’s four books. When the opportunity arose to travel to Yorkshire, it was as though I were being given a rare chance to enter the realm of literature, a world previously existing only in my mind.

But first I had to get there physically. Prior to this, my experience in independent travel had been non-existent. I hadn’t even braved the tube alone, but the Herriot weekend had to be done solo, so various arrangements were made, and I found myself, after a narrow escape from the clutches of Victoria Station, seated on a two-tiered English bus in the middle of the night. I’d always imagined riding through the dark English countryside at such a height would be a serene, calming experience — I’d lean dreamily against the window as Simon and Garfunkel hummed in my ear and picturesque hills rolled past. If anything, this journey was to be about the disillusion of reality. The seven hour bus ride was occupied with fits of painful dozing in a smoky, cramped aisle seat next to the most uninteresting man in all of Great Britain.

Arriving in a small foreign village at five o’clock in the morning is a humbling experience. I strolled the abandoned streets of Darlington, England, and for the first time in my life, I experienced what it is to be completely alone. It wasn’t unpleasant. Rather, the misty streets and the swirling dark skies seemed to me to be straight off the pages of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

I was still a long way from James Herriot. My final destination was Thirsk, some thirty obscure miles away. In some ways my adventure started that morning on the rattling local buses of remote Yorkshire. Boarding such a bus, I was to find, meant pleasant, thickly speaking bus drivers, comfortably unassuming locals, and miles of winding beauty, albeit at terrifying speeds. My arrival in the town center of Thirsk was unceremonious. My planning had delivered me without incident smack-dab in the middle of James Herriot’s hometown, but that is precisely where any planning stopped. All that was left was improvisation and hopeful guess-work.

When singing the praises of England, I always include the small signs depicting a small cursive white “i” with its distinctive blue background—the sign for tourist information. Countless times I wandered from a train or bus station, without so much as an inkling of an idea which way to turn, and found a trail of blessed blue signs to guide me. Thirsk was no exception. Within five minutes of arrival, I was being assisted by two elderly men in Thirsk’s tiny tourist office. Neither of the men was openly friendly or curious, but somehow there earnest attempts to find me an affordable bed and breakfast were endearing. The men, I later realized, personified the attitudes of the area. They were kind and helpful as well as unassuming and sincere.

The closest B and B was just up Kirkgate road, only six or seven buildings away, but I passed by it completely, overwhelmed by the simple two and three story brick buildings separated by a narrow road and accented by nothing. As dull as this sounds, it was somehow just right, not showy or breathtaking, but solid and assuring, like the men.

Mrs. Dodd’s establishment was no exception, nor, for that matter, was Mrs. Dodd. Without fuss or nonsense, she conveyed a calming sense of compassion and carthiness. It was maddening to try to grasp just how she and so many others could be so soft-spoken and aloof and yet make one feel so warm and pleased. My room was small and bright; the bed took up almost all available floor space. Several ceramic knickknacks adorned a shelf over the bed, and had I been anyplace else in the world, I would have taken one as a souvenir.

The greater part of my task still lay ahead of me. I was desperate to remain as discreet and un-American as possible, so asking the first available pedestrian to point me to Herriot’s surgery was definitely out. I headed back towards the town center, past an ivy covered building, a meat market, a fish and chips shop and several small tourist shops. After a minimum of searching, I came across a post card of the famous veterinarian surgery, the ivy covered building back on Kirkgate road. With mixed feelings, I hurried back to the street from which I had just come. Ashamed but elated, I at last set eyes on the genuine home of Dr. James Wight (Herriot), veterinarian and writer. It was two doors from my bed and breakfast, and I’d passed it twice before in the last half hour.

Over the course of the weekend, I managed to walk past the surgery a dozen times, and I even sat in Herriot’s waiting room before being chased out by a bustling receptionist. My desparation mounted as I contemplated kidnapping a stray cat, maiming it, and returning to the surgery where I would demand immediate medical attention, but my courage failed, and the realization that I would not be meeting Dr. Herriot left me bitter with disappointment.

I made a half-hearted attempt to salvage the weekend by taking an afternoon’s stroll through the countryside with Mrs. Dodd’s border collie by my side and absolutely nothing on my mind but the land before me. Everyone has magical moments which they relive in their head, moments which require no reworking or enhancement, so dreamily perfect in reality that they stand on their own. This afternoon was one such moment. Fred lead me quickly through town, and as I released him on the outskirts into a pasture which must have belonged to someone but for the moment belonged only to its inhabitants, I lived a far-away dream of my childhood. For the next four hours, I was inside a book I’d read a half a dozen times. The grass that I walked on, I had walked on in my mind, years ago. The sheep and the horses and the dogs and the people that crossed my path had once been seen and touched and spoken to by a simple man who had the wisdom and the eloquence to capture them in words and to share them in books to be lived and relived as I now did.

At about two o’clock, I climbed an abrupt fold in the green landscape and sat down. From where I sat, I could see a great deal — a green patchwork of pastureland and stone walls and trees and sheep. I thought about being a kid in Minnesota and reading on long bus rides home and spending infinite afternoons with only my dog and a few acres of hill and earth and tree. And now, to be that same kid, eight years later, sitting in England with a dog named Fred, surrounded by hill and earth and tree… I read from All Creatures Great and Small that afternoon, sitting on that hill. The words were the same as they’d been when I first read the book, and yet each word took on a new and special significance as I sat in the midst of their source of inspiration. In Herriot’s own words: “Today the endless patchwork of fields slumbered in the sun, and the air, even on the hill, was heavy with the scents of summer… I couldn’t see a living soul; and the peace which I always found in the silence and the emptiness of the moors filled me utterly.”