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The Trip West. My Travels in the Land of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
My Travels in the Land of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
By Vernon Pedersen, Professor of American History. American University in Bulgaria. (2002)

I came to know the landscape of Robert Pirsig’s trip west long before I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I was born and raised in northern Montana and traveled about the state while I was growing up. While attending college at the University of Montana in Missoula I occasionally visited the campus of the schools’ main rival Montana State University in Bozeman where Phaedrus taught rhetoric and composition. Later I lived in various places in the mid-west and traveled along Pirsig’s route on frequent visits home. The last trip was in the summer of 1995 with my wife and two small children in a U-haul truck when we moved our home from Indiana back to Montana. One of my favourite pictures of my family is of my wife and children at a rest stop in the heart of the North Dakota badlands near Theodore Roosevelt’s ranch. My wife leans against a low wall holding our son while my daughter sits on top of the wall clutching his diaper bag. Behind them the earth stretches away in a series of sharp ridges layered in brilliant contrasting reds, browns and yellows. Pirsig passed just south of this spot in his journey across South Dakota, he and his friends found it one of the harshest sections of their journey, but, to my wife and I the starkly beautiful landscape means we have returned to the west our favourite part of the world.

Pirsig’s journey began in Minneapolis where my family and I spent the night after traveling non-stop from southern Indiana in July of 1995. We followed the same route out of the city he did, northwest along I-94. The landscape along this route is gently rolling, green, with fields and trees, the road side marshes and red-winged blackbirds that Pirsig tried to point out to his son are still there scattered at intervals along the road. A few hours out of Minneapolis is the small town of Sauk Centre the model for Sinclair Lewis’ mythical Gopher Prairie in Main Street. Sauk Centre is typical of the towns all throughout central Minnesota with a two block long main street lined with respectable looking brick store fronts leading to a city park and a small pond. In fact Sauk Central bears a strong resemblance my own hometown in Montana, but with less trees and without the pond. [Editors note: Sauk Centre is along I-94. Pirsig's route was more likely to have been Route 55, which is south of and parallel to I-94.]

Past Sauk Centre the countryside begins to open up into the increasingly arid spaces of the high plains. Pirsig comments on the breath of the Red River valley but the most noticeable difference is the sudden absence of trees. When crossing the Dakotas I normally follow I-94 to Moorhead and then into North Dakota. Pirsig, with his well-known aversion to federal hi-ways, turned west much sooner on state route 210. Once across the North Dakota border the road, an old two-lane hi-way that parallels a railroad, becomes route 13. The small towns along the route are named after places in Europe such as Verona, Crete and Hague. Names customarily picked from a map by railroad officials charged with naming the water stops spaced regularly along the road. It is in one of these that Pirsig and his traveling companions stop for the first night.

Pirsig’s path and mine cross again in Mobridge, South Dakota. The town’s name is an abbreviation of Missouri Bridge and the aging span across the Missouri River is the town’s only distinguishing characteristic. I visited the town in the summer of 1980 when I was living in Aberdeen, South Dakota, a hundred miles to the east. I drove there one Sunday with some friends out of pure boredom and had lunch at the A and W where Pirsig and his friends stopped. The restaurant stands little back on a high bluff overlooking the river. The view from its parking lot, curb service was still available when I was there, is superb. The road drops sharply towards the river and bridge while the land on the other side sweeps away in endless rolling waves of manila coloured prairie. West of the river is Indian land the Standing Rock reservation home to several branches of the Lakota nation including the Hunkpapa whose most famous representative was the great chief Sitting Bull. In 1890 Sitting Bull died at the hands of tribal police during the ghost dance scare that culminated in the massacre of Big Foot’s band of Lakota at Wounded Knee. Sitting Bull is buried near Mobridge but Pirsig must have been unaware of the location of the modest monument that marks his grave. [Editors note: Although there is a restaurant on the west side of Mobridge that does have a very nice river bluff view, I believe the historical 1968 A & W is on the East side of the center of Mobridge. It is now the Yellow Sub Restaurant located on the South side of Rt 20 thru town. This information is based on my on site interviews with the owner of the Yellow Sub and the owner of the Mobridge A & W, which was the building that, with extensive renovations, became the Yellow Sub.]

After an uncomfortable night camping on the Standing Rock reservation Pirsig and company turned north along hi-way 12 and crossed back into North Dakota. The hi-way parallels Interstate 94 my favoured route across the plains. For Pirsig and the Sutherlands the days journey through the Dakota and Montana bad lands proved to be a great ordeal. Although I can sympathize to a degree, the distances are immense and it seems at times that the journey will never end, in fact this stretch of territory is among my favourite places. The landforms in the badlands are hauntingly beautiful and the location has a distinctively western feel signaling that I am getting closer to home. Pirsig, of course, was approaching Phaedrus’ home, which did not have the same resonance, but a sense of the changed atmosphere comes through in the passage where he contemplates the lives of the permanent residents of high plains. [Editors note: The camp ground was south of Lemon, ND and thus west of the Standing Rock reservation.]

Once over the Montana State line the Bad Lands gradually give way to rough prairie cut deeply by wind erosion into "coulees" the local name for the steep V shaped ravines that characterize the region. The rugged land makes the sudden transition to the broad valley of the Yellowstone River all the more dramatic. Pirsig describes the valley as a stand in for the mid-west with its prosperous farms and cornfields. But only someone who considers Minnesota the mid-west could make such a statement. The Yellowstone is a fertile part of Montana but it is much drier then the mid-west and the relatively green farms give way to honey coloured grass immediately past the line of irrigation. The road along the river is gently curving and easy to drive allowing travelers to make a swift and easy trip to Bozeman. But instead of going straight to the city where Phaedrus had taught Pirsig and his friends turned south into Yellowstone Park.

Although Phaedrus had spent long periods in the mountains he did not like the manicured tourist filled Park and never went there. Pirsig must not have been very impressed either, as he says nothing about the drive across the Park’s northern edge. When I first read that section of his book I rejected Phaedrus’ attitude as pure misanthropy. But, despite the fact that I grew up in Montana and visited Glacier Park dozens of times, when I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I had never been in Yellowstone Park either. Since then I have visited the Park only once on a trip with my parents and siblings in the early 1980s. Although I was properly impressed with the geysers and the mud pots I have never been back and now understand what Phaedrus found unattractive about the place. It is too perfect, too overcrowded and has an air of unreality about it.

Just outside the Park’s north entrance is Gardner, Montana, where Pirsig and his companions stopped for the night. Gardner is one of the most perfectly cited towns in the state. It stretches along one side of its only street a row of taverns, restaurants, gift shops and a few motels all looking weathered and just a decade removed from the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Immediately behind the town, mountains rise up dramatically to over ten thousand feet perfectly framing the buildings. From Gardner the hi-way drops down to Livingston and back to the Yellowstone River where a left turn and a few dozen miles brings you to Bozeman.

Phaedrus spent many years of his life in Bozeman teaching and camping in the surrounding mountains. I have only visited the city a few times mostly while I was a student at the near by (by Montana standards) town of Missoula. My most vivid memories of Bozeman are the round towers of the residence halls which have pie-shaped rooms on the inside, and Karl Marx Pizza a popular student hang (at least in 1975). The town itself looks like many similar sized cities in the American west, a long main street lined with retail stores specializing in outdoor supplies and used books as well as trendy restaurants catering to the tourist trade. And the growing number of wealthy easterners who have followed Ted Turner to "the last best place." Phaedrus did not have to endure this particular influx, and many native residents and I envy him.

From Bozeman Pirsig traveled on to Missoula a place I know much better. I lived there for two years, and changed my major three times, while attending the University of Montana as an undergraduate. In 1974 when I arrived at the University, Missoula was a town of 50,000, augmented by 8,000 college students, nestled tightly against the Rocky Mountains on the northwest and sprawling over the Yellowstone valley to the southeast. The Yellowstone River, much narrower then at Bozeman, runs right next to the campus which rests at the base of an imposing mountain graced by a giant concrete "M" and painted white each year by student volunteers. A small footbridge connects the campus to a near-by shopping center frequented by the students. The town has a turn of the century central district featuring industrial looking brick buildings and is home to the Stockman’s bar, which in the early 1970s was the best place for late night omelets to soak up a night at the towns’ abundant bars. I preferred the Stockman’s special filled with ham, onions, green peppers and cheddar cheese guaranteed to settle any amount of beer and whiskey. Although it helps to be 19 as well.

Shopping malls, fast food restaurants and car dealerships line a diagonal road leading from the campus toward the pulp mill at the far edge of town. The strip is also home to the Heideldhause an ersatz Bavarian inn specializing in cheese fondu with a pool room bar called the library, for the benefit of students who didn’t want to out right lie to their parents. Nearby the Heidelhause was the much rougher Rawhide club, which specialized in amateur strip nights. Further out past the strip area is the famous school for Montana’s "Smoke Jumpers", immortalized by Norman Mac Lean’s Young Men and Fire. One of my earliest memories is of a visit to the school while in Missoula to visit relatives. I watched practice jumps with fascination and was thrilled to learn the intricate art of parachute packing. Missoula also boasts old Fort Missoula, which is more of a park than a restored cavalry fort. It is most notable in my memory for a visit to the barns rented by the School of Forestry where I saw my first Grizzly bear cub.

Two years in Missoula left me with far more memories than are appropriate to record here. Pirsig spent relatively little time in the city departing after a few days for the west coast. I left Missoula for Chicago on my own eastward odysseys that eventually lead me to Bulgaria where I work today. I own a home in Montana and return there every year or so but Pirsig and my paths parted in Missoula twenty-five years ago.

Click on the link below to go to
In the Footsteps or Bike-Tire Tracks... My Trip to Interview Gennie and Bob De Weese
An essay by Thomas J. Steele, S.J. -, Regis University, Denver. CO. Father Steel is a coauthor of the "Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (GZMM). TripInterviewDeWeese