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Twain Tracks
ON THE TRAIL OF ONE OF AMERICA’S GREATESTWRITERS
ADodge Caravan pulls into Seattle on a typically damp afternoon.
The driver, 70-year-old Northwestern University professor Loren
Ghiglione, and his two traveling companions get out and take a
good long stretch. It’s especially well deserved, given that they’ve
been on the road for 85 days—eating at roadside buffets, drinking
gas station coffee, crashing at Super 8s—all in the name of one
man: Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain.
Along with Northwestern junior Dan Tham and recent gradu-
ate Alyssa Karas, Ghiglione launched this 13,500-mile odyssey
fromTwain’s hometown of Florida,Mo. (current population: zero),
stitching together a 30-city itinerary inspired by routes that the
author took in the 1850s and 1860s. Their goal: to explore iden-
tity in America by interviewing people along the way about race,
immigration and sexuality for a book Ghiglione is working on.
“I’ve always been fascinated by Twain, and I thought, ‘Maybe I
can use himto get people to think about serious issues,’” Ghiglione
says, noting that Twain oncewrote that “travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” (In fact, Twain himself had been
an admitted bigot before becoming enlightened through travel.)
Ghiglione recruited Karas and Tham through a student email
blast and received a grant to fund the adventure. Their stops
included theOccupyWall Street protest inNewYork City (“It was
11 a.m. and everyone was sleeping,” recalls Karas); a barbershop
on Chicago’s South Side frequented by President Obama (Ghi-
glione got a trim); and an old Nevada mining town, where Tham
celebrated his 21st birthday (the locals baked him a carrot cake).
“A lot of times, we just dropped in on people and hoped for the
best,” says Karas, who squeezed an interview out of Harvard’s
Henry Louis Gates Jr. after arriving at his office unan-
nounced. “We always finished the day saying, ‘Wow,
we got lucky.’”
Except, that is, in San Francisco, where thieves
broke into the Caravan and stole Ghiglione’s and
Karas’ laptops, as well as Karas’ suitcase. Fortu-
nately, Tham’s computer, which held the bulk of
the trip’s video footage, was spared, and
Karas’ luggage was eventually found
with her belongings intact—mostly.
“My clothes were in there,” she
says, “but the thieves took
my biography of Mark
Twain.” Perhaps they
were planning a road
trip of their own.
—NICOLE FREHSEE
INFIERNO, PERU
POWER PLANTS
Filling prescriptions straight from
nature’smedicine cabinet
For a 54-year-old shaman, DonHonorato
Mishaja looks a lot like a teenage hippie.
Wearing baggy jeans, dirt-caked sneakers
and a white T-shirt that reads “We Believe
inNature,” the expert in traditional
Peruvianmedicine strolls through a lush
7.4-acre plot of land in the Amazon, talking
about the “spirit of the jungle” embodied
by all the plants in the rain forest. He holds
up an ordinary-looking leaf picked froma
kno y stem; to the untrained eye, it could
be a ficus leaf. “This is a natural anesthetic
—the jungle’s novocaine,” he says.
Mishaja presides over the healing
center Centro Nape, which is located on
this plot of land and which serves the
400 indigenous people of the nearby
community of Infierno. The leathery-faced
medicine man—whose grandfather, father
and uncle were also healers—sees as many
as five patients a day, treating everything
from intestinal parasites to alcoholism.
Natural anesthetics aren’t the only
remedies Mishaja has unearthed in the
Amazon, which has been called “nature’s
medicine cabinet.” His ramshackle labora-
tory also contains such handy treatments
as
cana canamorado
(“like aspirin”);
ojé
,
the sap of the
Ficus insipida
tree (“when
mixed with honey, it acts as a laxative”);
and
sacha bufeo
(“a love potion”).
Outside his lab, Mishaja pours shot
glasses full of a deep burgundy liquid
made from the
chuchuhuasi
plant for a
group of visitors from the nearby Posada
Amazonas lodge. (Owned by Infierno
locals, the lodge may soon start a program
withMishaja whereby guests can spend a
night at Centro Nape.) The sweet concoc-
tion creates a pleasant, caffeine-like buzz.
“It’s the Red Bull of the jungle,” Mishaja
says.
—BROOKE PORTER
SEATTLE
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