The God Particle - Editor's Note


THE GOLDEN WEST I never really thought about the West until my ship set sail for Hawaii. I was relatively new to the Navy, still struggling to learn the lingo and find my way around the frigate, when I found myself embarking on a WestPac: Navy slang for six-month cruise of the Western Pacific. I’d heard about the South Pacific before, but the Western Pacific was an utterly new concept for me. I looked for it on a map but it wasn’t there. I figured it was something the Navy had made up. Growing up on the East Coast, my idea of the West was a half-baked amalgamation of ideas poached from old black and white TV Westerns and cop shows. When I splashed down in San Diego after eight weeks of boot camp, I was stunned by the sight of palm trees sprouting out of vacant lots, along the freeways, even on the naval base. It was my “you’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. Whenever I think of California, I think of palm trees. Once we broke berth, slipped past the submarine station at Point Loma, and started steaming toward the Hawaiian Islands, California was no longer the West. How could it be? California was behind us, to the East. The West lay ahead, somewhere between the bow of the boat and the golden bowl of the sun. When we steamed into Hawaii what did I find? More palm trees. And more West. Our next destination was the Philippine Islands, which confused me because I thought the P.I. was in the Far East, and here we were, heading farther West. I asked the quartermaster about it; he looked up from the chart table and muttered, “FNG” and went back to work. (The NG stood for new guy, I trust it will take you considerably less time to discern what the F stood for than it took me.) Eventually I figured it out. It was all a matter of perspective, point of reference, and ours was constantly moving. The West was relative to the bearing of the boat. Wherever our bow was pointed, that was the West. As soon was we turned around for the return voyage, the West became irrelevant because now we were homeward bound, two of the sweetest words ever wedded together, even for those of us whose true home was several thousand miles East of home. Several years after I was discharged from the Navy, I headed East to a school in Flagstaff, Arizona, and discovered a whole new kind of West. This West had less to do with the marriage of South and West than notions of wildness. And guns. And, if the gift shops are to be believed, coyotes with bandannas tied around their necks howling, presumably, at the moon. I can’t say I ever found the West. To seek it is, has been, and always will be, emblematic of immersion in the unexpected. This is the essence of the stories embedded in this westward-leaning issue of The God Particle. They remind us that the Golden West can be a tricky thing to find, no matter how well we think we know the way. Jim Ruland
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THE GOLDEN WEST

I never really thought about the West until my ship set sail for Hawaii. I was relatively new to the Navy, still struggling to learn the lingo and find my way around the frigate, when I found myself embarking on a WestPac: Navy slang for six-month cruise of the Western Pacific. I’d heard about the South Pacific before, but the Western Pacific was an utterly new concept for me. I looked for it on a map but it wasn’t there. I figured it was something the Navy had made up.

Growing up on the East Coast, my idea of the West was a half-baked amalgamation of ideas poached from old black and white TV Westerns and cop shows. When I splashed down in San Diego after eight weeks of boot camp, I was stunned by the sight of palm trees sprouting out of vacant lots, along the freeways, even on the naval base. It was my “you’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. Whenever I think of California, I think of palm trees.

Once we broke berth, slipped past the submarine station at Point Loma, and started steaming toward the Hawaiian Islands, California was no longer the West. How could it be? California was behind us, to the East. The West lay ahead, somewhere between the bow of the boat and the golden bowl of the sun. When we steamed into Hawaii what did I find? More palm trees. And more West. Our next destination was the Philippine Islands, which confused me because I thought the P.I. was in the Far East, and here we were, heading farther West. I asked the quartermaster about it; he looked up from the chart table and muttered, “FNG” and went back to work. (The NG stood for new guy, I trust it will take you considerably less time to discern what the F stood for than it took me.)

Eventually I figured it out. It was all a matter of perspective, point of reference, and ours was constantly moving. The West was relative to the bearing of the boat. Wherever our bow was pointed, that was the West. As soon was we turned around for the return voyage, the West became irrelevant because now we were homeward bound, two of the sweetest words ever wedded together, even for those of us whose true home was several thousand miles East of home.

Several years after I was discharged from the Navy, I headed East to a school in Flagstaff, Arizona, and discovered a whole new kind of West. This West had less to do with the marriage of South and West than notions of wildness. And guns. And, if the gift shops are to be believed, coyotes with bandannas tied around their necks howling, presumably, at the moon.

I can’t say I ever found the West. To seek it is, has been, and always will be, emblematic of immersion in the unexpected. This is the essence of the stories embedded in this westward-leaning issue of The God Particle. They remind us that the Golden West can be a tricky thing to find, no matter how well we think we know the way.

Jim Ruland

CONTENTS PAGE