Last year I volunteered for the first time to campaign in a presidential election. My assignment for the Obama team was in Carson City, Nevada, forty miles from my home in northern California. Was I nervous? Very. Any disturbed occupant might wing open a door and argue me and my canvassing partner speechless. Lucky for me, most who answered just wanted more collectible campaign buttons. No one accosted me; no loose dogs attacked.

On Nov. 4, I went out for the last sweep, this time alone. My job was to make sure Obama supporters made it to the polls. If they needed help getting there, I would arrange it. My address packet directed me to a neighborhood abutting Carson City’s downtown commercial core, a row of new and historical buildings punctuated now and again by glittery casinos. Most folks who opened their doors had already voted, but a half-dozen said they would have forgotten to if I hadn’t knocked. A few lost souls hadn’t remembered it was Election Day.

My last stop was at a group of tired out one-room cabins huddled on a dusty dead-end road. It seemed these were once part of a little motel, probably built in the 1940s when people vacationed up and down the eastern Sierra in their new automobiles. At cabin number 15 a grizzle-faced old man cracked open the door. “I voted,” he whispered before I could speak.

“Oh,” I said, awkwardness stealing my own voice. He wore a bathrobe and thick socks, and his legs were bare. It felt a violation of privacy even to gaze at his face, pinched as it was between the door and frame. “Thank you very much.” I said. I thought I smelled burned rice. As I pivoted to leave, instead of closing the door, he stepped outside, his socks scuffing the stoop. I was already crossing the dirt yard, keys in hand reaching for the car door. My four-year-old Subaru looked especially shiny and big next to these worn-out huts. I wondered if maybe this old man had to walk everywhere, or take the bus, carrying his weekly plastic sack of groceries home by hand. The man strained to project his thin voice: “It’s good, what you’re doing,” he said.

My outstretched key hand dropped to my side. I turned, facing him fully. “Thank you,” I said. “It’s good you voted.”

I expected him to shrink back into shyness, but instead he pressed on. “I want to tell you that in the place where they vote at midnight, that small town where just a few people vote, they all went for Obama. I wanted to tell you that.” He scratched his chin. His gaze shifted to the ground.

 “That’s great news,” I said. “Thank you so much for telling me.” I didn’t rush off then, but paused, taking my own survey of the ground where my boots were mustached in dirt. I shrugged. “This is a good day.”

Driving away, I considered that a brief moment had suddenly stretched big and wide into something much larger than just a pinpoint of time. I wondered if this kind of face-to-face exchange is what we’re all seeking, if in fact it may be the true motivation behind our restless motion and debate: We want, simply, to connect.

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