Yenna and Elena

Before she put on her chick costume.  This girl strutted around the neighborhood like she'd been trick-or-treating for years!

Candy's good.  Cookies are good.  But what's REALLY good are puppies.  Any puppies, any size, any disposition.  This girl loves dogs!  

Has anybody seen my broomstick?

Here I'm going for the intimidating look.  How'd I do?

This is me admiring my blind turkeys!

Okay. I did it!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO YOU ALL--Nellie especially for giving me this recipe for turkeys!  Mine, you will notice, if you compare the five I made to the ones on the website, are messy, crooked nosed, and eyeless every one.

But I wanted to be a good grandmother and so there you have it--my feeble efforts to make turkeys for Elena's second Halloween.  In a few minutes, my tiny house will be filled with chickens and superheroes and famous people, all little, all about to get a sugar high on Oreos and Bodega Bay taffy and jelly beans. 

You know they do studies on everything.  I heard on NPR this morning that "studies show" that kids who get only one piece of candy are happier than kids who get a lot at each house.  A Baby Ruth and a piece of bubble gum only dashes the joy--stick to the Baby Ruth, they say.

I am about to place this witch's hat upon my head and start growling.  Happy Halloween, Everybody!

What's Your Chatty Cathy?

I got an email from Linda Kot--she finally traded in her flip phone for an iPhone!
She wrote about how over-the-top excited she was to finally have a phone like her friends, a phone to double as a camera and share pictures.  But why had she resisted so long?

She wrote about Chatty Cathy--how she yearned for one with all her heart as a child, yet never got one.  In time, Chatty Cathy became symbolic of the lessons ingrained in her by her family: Only buy what you absolutely need; avoid name brands; be thrifty.  Linda was euphoric that she had stepped over that line and bought her own iPhone.  Already she's sending me pictures of her new grand-puppy Josie on it!

Whether it's money or ingrained beliefs, don't we all have Stop Signs that keep us from doing even little things we want to do?  Not just material things--but experiences?  Doesn't everybody have a "Chatty Cathy"?

There was a flag in a shop in Bodega Bay.  Multi-colored.  Twenty-five dollars.  What did I need with a multi-colored flag?  I must have seen it on a day when I was thinking, "I've already spent too much!"

But, later, when I saw a flag like that flying at an art gallery, I thought: I gotta have that flag!

And so I called Second Wind shop of flags and whirligigs and ordered one.  I could probably have ordered one from the Internet, but I wanted it to come from Elaine and Second Wind, a reminder of a conversation we had one afternoon before she directed me to the best bowl of clam chowder ever.

Today the flag arrived.  Elaine, the owner, had packed the box full of Jelly Bellies and salt water taffy, all colors, like the ones I used to bring back from Cape Cod.  The flag is great and I'm going to hang it in a window as a reminder of a special afternoon at Bodega Bay. But what really touched me was a beautiful Bodega Bay postcard from Elaine:

"Welcome home!  Hope this package and the little surprises tucked inside bring a smile to your face and  that warm memories of your trip to Bodega Bay fill your heart!  It was great meeting you!"

Her note made me even happier than the flag.
Those are the kinds of things that keep a journey going long after you've been towed your last mile on the actual road.  It's all about the people, the gifts of kindness.

Sometimes being generous with ourselves connects us to all kinds of surprises from other people. I suggest we all pick a Chatty Cathy and go for it.

Bones

Would anyone like to take a guess

 (without peeking on Google) 

how many bones there are in each of your feet?

                           Okay:  good guesses all 'round!

The human foot has 26 bones, each foot!

When you put both feet side by side, you are looking at (or would be if you had x-ray vision) 52 tiny little bones.  And that (which I just learned five seconds ago) is 25% of all the bones in your entire body!

When I was a little kid in Georgia, we used to put our fast-growing little feet in X-ray machines at the shoe store to determine our shoe sizes, even when all we were buying were $2.00 Keds.  Today we'd probably cock our heads in disbelief if someone suggested getting an MRI to figure out what size hat we wore, but back then, in the Fifties, nobody thought it strange at all.  

The Internet further informs me that each foot has 33 joints and 19 muscles and tendons.  I wish they had taught us this kind of stuff in school instead of, say, the population of the Netherlands. The number of bones in the foot is, best I can tell, a constant.

There's a track to follow somewhere, you're thinking?

So this morning, when I finally pulled the plug to let out the water from my long soak bath, that same water somehow came surging out from under the toilet, seven towels worth.  I made a few phone calls and was told that today was not the best day to have a plumbing emergency, as they seem to be all the rage today in San Antonio.

But finally--thanks to Kate--I got the number of a plumber who is even now doing noisy enough things in my bathroom that I'm pretty sure it will lead to a costly and semi-permanent solution. 

But back to the feet:

Several of us have, on various occasions, discussed the fact that it takes as long to recover from a trip as it does to take said trip--a factoid that would mean I still have thirty-something days to go before being "back to normal"--physically speaking. 

However, during the limbo hours between plumbing disaster and repair, I decided to do what maybe everyone decides to do when a problem is out of one's hands: I got a pedicure.

This was not an ordinary "paint your nails" deal; it was a recovery-accelerating treatment extraordinaire!

Complete with paraffin and green tea lotion, finished off by someone you don't even know massaging the 19 muscles and 26 bones in each foot, this procedure is exactly what you need for re-entry after any journey.  I'm just saying…. 

Monday Morning

I can't help myself!
I'm home, yet I still want to write blog posts!
Writing makes me feel like the journey is ongoing, even at home, and I like that.

Today I have spent the entire morning re-reading Stoneflower Journey, and making minor changes.

Nellie sent me a pattern for cute little cookie and candy turkeys--which, of course, I want to make for Elena's second Halloween.  That means a quick trip to the grocery store: double stuffed Oreos, candy corn, Whoppers, and icing.  (We always have plenty of Reeses in this house!)

http://smashingcakedesigns.blogspot.com/2010/10/oreo-cookie-turkeys-tutorial.html

I heard from California Linda that my "travel advisors" are off the clock!  I'm missing my travel advisors!  (I showed Linda and her roadster to Kyle, the tow-truck driver, and he said, "Awesome!")

I also got a call from Jocelyn, my sister-in-law, this morning, who's originally from California--and she just told me about enough places I still need to see that I'm almost ready to head back.  Almost!

Sometime…..

What an amazing finale! This from Janet Penley!

Those of you who have seen Janet's beautiful handmade pillows can imagine how thrilled I was just now when she brought me a pillow she'd made to represent this trip!  This is a treasure too big to lie upon so I'm going to hang it on the wall and just love looking at it forever!

I also got to see an inspiring book she'd made for Jane, her daughter, for her 30th birthday: Thirty Years of Loving Jane.  What a creative book full of memories of 30 years!

Here's to you, Janet, a creative spirit who always inspires me!

Thank  you so much for this symbolic and colorful and playful pillow!

Driving Still

During the night, dreaming, I'm still driving.
Last night I dreamed I was in Seattle and  my daddy was there wearing red gloves.  It was cold, and he was giving me some driving advice--which I can't recall this morning.

When I woke up, I noticed that there was no toilet paper.  "Where do these people keep their toilet paper?" I wondered--only to realize that I was "these people."

I haven't calculated the exact mileage, but it's somewhere around 7000 miles--of pure joy!  (I'm not counting the last 309 miles of terror piggybacking on the tow truck--though even that had one moment of happiness: "You can't be sixty five!" Kyle said, "I'd have thought maybe 50."  NObody ever says that; the trauma of a flat tire must have temporarily erased 15 years.)

I wrote earlier that if I trip doesn't change or stretch you, it's just a vacation.
Just?  I need a vacation today!  A time to just loll in the bed and rest--which is what I'm doing.

But how did this trip change or stretch me?

For one, it gave me such special times with old friends, Rone and Barbel--reminding me of the gifts of hospitality!  Dinner on Barbel's purple table and dinner with Rone's family and Linda in a room with twinkling white lights--those were by far the best meals of this trip.

For another, it gave me new friends along the way and what could be better than that?

For another, several of you have kept up with this blog and written me the dearest letters and "Glimpses" from Carlene that I am printing and keeping always.  I feel so stretched by the circle of people who have taken the time to follow along and be so present with me from the beginning to the end!

For another, it reminded me of the spaciousness and beauty in this country.  If I were to watch the news (which I rarely do) I would think that this country is all about politics and discord; getting away from the news allowed me to remember how much breathtaking beauty there is, what's worthy of admiration and protection.

Finally, I had the space to reflect: to engage primarily with the adventure of silence and solitude.  Sometimes we get so busy we forget to give ourselves solitude.  Sometimes we need time apart from house and work and everything--so that when we come back to it, we feel filled up again, ready to re-engage.

The Pritchetts and their new car today

This is Veronica's new Toyota--a pearl white Four-Runner--and as you can see, they are thrilled with it.  I got the Mini back (with is fifth free run flat tire) just in time to join them for the last moments of their shopping day and then we went to Chuy's for some good Mexican food.  In the parking lot, a balloon flying free was caught on the fly--by me.  I think that means something maybe?   It popped soon thereafter, to Elena's dismay, but it was a good thing while it lasted.

It was so wonderful to be with my Texas Pritchetts tonight!  "Angels on those new bumpers," Veronica! 

Home At Last!

I wasn't afraid driving the curvy Big Sur.
I wasn't afraid of going to a clothing optional hot springs.
I wasn't afraid talking to strangers anywhere.
But I was a little afraid last night in the cab of the tow truck, racing down I 10 in the dark, my poor Mini on the back, the driver with his eyes on the phone attached to his windshield, receiving (then telling me about) the texts from the girl he's in love with (with whom he's had only one date.)

We talked all the way to the roar of the tow truck and the sound of metallic music on his phone.  "She thinks I have a great playlist!" he said.

But look: we got here after all, safe and sound!
"I have the Ugly Duckling syndrome," Kyle told me.  "The kids and everybody always told me I was ugly, that I'd never have a girlfriend, that I was a nerd."

And now look: this girl likes him!  She really really likes him!  She thinks he's handsome, funny, and smart--all of which he is, actually.

By the time we got to San Antonio, I wanted to adopt the boy.  His father never calls him; he sends a card on his birthday.  His mother moved far away (to Kerrville--that's an hour away) and he hasn't seen her since two birthdays ago.

Today, my suitcases are strewn all over the living room.  The Mini is at the Mini Center getting a new tire.  The mail is a foot high.  My body is stiff from trying to "help" Kyle drive by leaning this way and that way for five hours.  I'm just about to soak in my very own bathtub and start slowly plowing through the stacks of things--after I eat more of the goodies Sweet Jan and Kate left in my refrigerator for me to come home to!

It was wonderful going, and it's wonderful being home!

Thanks so much to those of you who have followed along from Day One, and thanks to all of you who have given me such amazing hospitality and beds and food along the way!

Leaving Ft Stockton in style

Now what?

It's going to be a pleasant day in the Day's Inn: finishing Arcadia and finishing Rone's book, The Holy Man--both excellent books for days such as this, waiting for a tow truck driver from San Antonio.

I'm actually looking forward to a little nap, too, a day to transition, a day to wait for my tow-man.  What will be be like, I wonder?  Linda Jordon suggested that it could very well be a poet who's moonlighting as a tow truck driver.  Kathi said it could be a woman--which would probably make for better conversation for 300 miles.  But whoever it is, I'm ready for one last run at Operation Haul-Ass.  He/she won't arrive until at least 7:00 tonight, so I'll probably arrive wilted and bedraggled, well past my own curfew.  But the Mini will be parked safely at the Mini Center, and they will get me a loaner tomorrow.

What lessons does the "Universe have to offer" in times like these--as Becky suggested there must be one?

First, after three such long haul tows (due to the fact that Mini Coopers only have run-flat tires and no one stocks them but Mini dealers): Maybe it's time to say "I've had my trip" again--in the spirit of the line I mentioned miles ago from Trip To Bountiful.  Maybe it's time to consider a new car, one that uses the kinds of tires everybody stocks.  It will feel a bit like a divorce, trading in the Mini, but I'm not up for many more tows.

Second, maybe I should have had a flat tire in California, where Mini Centers are everywhere.  Can I ask for a re-do on a flat tire?

Third, maybe like Carlene says, I should just get home and figure that out later!

I've been listening to the voices of wisdom all along the trip: all of your voices and those I stumble upon on Wise People radio.  One of them said that to reach the frontiers of our lives we have to be willing "to hazard ourselves"--by which I think the speaker meant to risk taking risks.  I didn't know he meant flat tires, but that's way better than some that could have come my way.  Carlene always thinks of the things that could have been way worse, and she's right: It's not a wreck, for Pete's sake, it's just a big old warped tire on an otherwise sweet  little car.

My loyalty to Mini Coopers is frayed a little today, but I must admit when I look out at her, still, in the parking lot of the Days Inn, I have to smile.  We've had some great adventures together!

Cleaning House in Ft. Stockton

I remember when Mimi and Papa were my age.  They suddenly up and sold all their furniture and bought new everything!  This was not what grandparents do.  They keep everything just as it is so that their children and grandchildren will have their memories intact.

But no: my sweet grandmother, as it turned out, was a radical.  She changed, to our collective dismay, everything!

It wasn't in our culture to change things.  Once you got everything all fixed like you liked it, you kept it that way.  Post war, post Depression, it was all you could do to build and fill the house you'd dreamed of and you were so proud of it. You had a story for each piece of furniture, when you got it, how much it cost.  You then made memories around the house; your children could come back and it would still be just as they remembered it.  Your grandchildren, too.

But as it turned out, Mimi planted a seed in me that I think about any time a friend says, "Your house is always changing!" It's in my genes.

Mimi and Papa always lived in small houses, two bedrooms, one bath, so it wasn't like they were spending a fortune on these changes.  Even when they moved (three times in my lifetime), they took their old stuff with them--until The Change!  Everything was strangely new, unfamiliar.

When I got to this Day's Inn last night looking for the pony in the barn of shit (you all know that story, don't you?  the two brothers go into the barn on Christmas morning and see it's filled with excrement and the pessimist brother gets all sad and the optimist brother says, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!")  I decided to clean house.  On my computer and phone.

My music library has been in place since I got my first iPod many years ago.  As I've moved up to newer iPods and now an iPhone, the music has moved with me.  Listening to that music yesterday, I kept clicking past songs I know.  Very few still speak to me.

I kept only what I  want to hear when I plug the phone into the speakers.  To hear the same song over and over is like re-reading the same book, when there are so many books out there to discover.

Now, with Pandora, you can create a station that sends you songs along the way in the vein of whatever musician you want.  With Podcasts, you can hear new conversations.

And so just like that, just like Mimi and her familiar furniture, I deleted hundreds of songs, shrinking my music library down to the essentials: Leonard Cohen, Jim Reeves (who sounds as close to my daddy singing as any one could sound), some actual voice mails my daddy left for Micah who saved them and made copies for us all, some poetry, a few audio books, a few others.

Before purging my library,  each time I heard a particular song, I could tell you exactly where I was when I first heard it.  The songs have become soundtracks of former trips.

It's not exactly the same as "outgrowing" the old; it's more like "overgrowing" them. The old familiar tunes are so absorbed in who we are that we don't actually need them anymore--except maybe when we want to travel back in time.

Good-bye Doo-Wop and all those Fifties songs I downloaded for Mike.
Good-bye Elvis, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel.
Good-bye Bob Dylan, Carly, Barbra.
Thanks for the memories, all of you.  If I ever need to wallow in former loves, I'll know where to find you.

Thursday in Ft. Stockton

But not for its scenic views:

I was traveling merrily along, singing to the radio, happy to be in Central zone, mentally unpacking, when WHAM!  The tire went flat just 10 miles or so east of Ft. Stockton.

Because they are run-flat tires, I was able to drive back to Ft. Stockton on them and do all the phone calls.

That's the good part.

The bad part of run-flat tires is that nobody stocks them but Mini dealers.

My warranty requires that they tow me to the NEAREST Mini dealer--which happens to be in El Paso, not San Antonio.  I'm going to call Mini America at 8:00 in the morning and see if I can whine loudly enough to convince them that I need to go home, not El Paso.  If I succeed, I'll be riding with a tow truck driver 300 miles.  If I don't succeed, I'll be towed to El Paso and start back from there driving home, hopefully by noon.

I'm now in a Day's Inn in Ft. Stockton, where--if you've ever been here you know--there is nothing pretty to look at, no matter how I spin it.  It's a drab little town with a bunch of motels and I just ate the worst meal of the trip at K-Bobs.

When my children were little, we used to look forward to dinner in an east Texas K-Bob.  Either they have changed drastically or I have: it is not a place I will like on Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter.  But the airy rolls were pretty tasty.

Stoneflower Journey

When I was "living in" Georgia six years ago, I got lonely for a friend who was a writer--so I went up to Asheville and found me one.  Jerri is a book designer and independent publisher.  All these years, Jerri has been a dear friend, to me and to my writing. (Sometimes writing needs a tough-love friend, and Jerri was able to be that.)

When I finished my book a year ago, Jerri  offered to publish it with LifeStories.  It's been a year of hard work, between and among her other book projects: editing, arranging, formatting, designing a cover with the beads that I wrote about in the book.  Writing a book is its own pleasure, but making one for other people to read involves more than I realized.  I have learned so much in our many phone conversations from Texas to Asheville.

The proof for the book will be waiting for me when I get home late tomorrow night, and I'm excited to read it and say, "Go!"

Stoneflower Journey is a book about my six-years-ago journey: a trip that started out in Texas, continued to New England, included a romance with a Georgia man that looked at first like it might be my ticket to that young dream of living in Georgia again, then wound up back exactly where I wanted to be--at 609 Ogden Lane.

The title comes from a legend I learned in college--though I've mangled it beyond recognition.  When I Googled the term, I discovered that my version is nothing like the original, but because it's been such a meaningful word for me all these years, I chose to take poetic license and use the story not  in its original form, but in the way I remembered it.

In short, a stoneflower is a "flower" you see when you're walking a path but too much in a hurry to really see up close.  You vow to "pick it" or "look at it" or take a picture of it even--when you come back.

But in the legend (as I'm co-opting it) the flower has turned into a stone.  Alas, in life and legends, it often happens that way: we plan to go back for the perfect shot but the light has changed.  We plan to go back later to pick up a treasure we glimpsed as we were hurrying by, only to discover that it's long gone.

As the story was told to me then (at eighteen, newly married, newly transplanted to Texas) a stoneflower is anything you pass up and later regret.  I was so haunted then by the prospect of regret that I tucked that story away as a cautionary tale.  I shared it with hundreds of classes of  college students, even had a literary magazine dedicated to me with that title--all the while blissfully unaware that my version of the story had taken on a life of its own, the version as I had misremembered it.

What matters is the way we deal with unrealized dreams.

In writing my book, I discovered that some old dreams are better left untouched or unclaimed.  Their time has passed; we've outgrown the need for them.  They are stones we carry around in our pocket maybe, but they don't need watering.

Other things, however, can return--and the years of waiting for them have made them all the more valuable.  The journey is not about getting everything you ever wanted, but it's often about deciding what you want now, today.

Both the trip of six years ago and the one I'm taking now have given me opportunities to search for things I may have passed up, earlier.  And the refrain I often hear myself singing is this: "Even now, you can't do, be, see everything."  No matter what, you're always making new choices based on who you are at the moment of choosing.

I want to put this in writing:

Thank you, Jerri, for believing in this book and for putting up with my indecisiveness from time to time.  You are an excellent editor!

And, thank you, Janet Penley, for telling me a  year ago that you wanted a finished book for your birthday!  I am not, by nature, a finisher.  I needed someone to need me to finish that book--and you did that for me!

It takes a village...just the right village....to write a book.

One of the things I've learned--blogging vs. book writing--is that the former is easier.  Once you call something a book, it has to have a narrative arc and a shape to it.  It usually takes a second (and a third, and a fourth) set of eyes to help the writer find the threads and weave them together into a whole piece.

After what turned out to be a nine-month adventure six years ago, I discovered that the flowers that were right for me were blooming in Texas, home.  Just like the treasure that the traveler in the tale searches the world for, then finds right in his own back yard.  One of my best treasures is literally in my own back yard, the house of writers.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

I had hoped to make it past El Paso, but I took a break and visited the Tuscon Art Museum--thus, I only got as far as Las Cruces.

I have been trying all day to think of something illuminating and inspiring to say about the I 10 drive, but there wasn't much.  The road is long, and as you drive it, it gets longer.  I passed the hours listening to an interview with Pat Conroy on the Diane Rehm show--a riveting interview about his latest book, The Death of Santini.  Then I listened to some entertaining podcasts Rone had given me: The Moth.

At the end of the interview with Pat Conroy, Diane Rehm said, "I hope you will keep writing.  Let your glory shine."  I have heard Diane Rehm interview hundreds of writers over the years, but I've never heard her express quite such transparent affection for a writer as she did in this interview.

Except for good listening and a tranquil view of mountains and desert, I kept thinking: this is one boring road!  Nothing edible grows beside the road, only grasses and more grasses, a few patches of Joshua trees, saguaro, some scrubby trees.  When I passed Highway 17 leading north to Sedona, it was all I could do to keep the car in the groove and keep heading for home.  But all good things must end--or so I've heard.

I became acquainted with a song I've never noticed in my iPod library before: "Let Me Fall" by Josh Groban.


Let me fall
Let me climb
There's a moment when fear
And dreams must collide

Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

Just as it was playing the third time (I was trying to memorize the lyrics) the parched earth of Arizona and New Mexico alongside the road began to soften.  The sky in my rearview mirror was a brilliant red.  I had to stop--right there on the side of the highway--to take a picture of that western sky.

I love that image: "Someone I am is waiting for courage/The one I will become will catch me...."

I wondered, too, if the same landscape would have been so "boring" if I were setting out instead of ending this adventure.  At the end of a journey, fatigue sets in, the vision dims a bit.  We think we know what's out there in familiar territory, and our looker gets lazy.  How do we keep the freshness of vision in our everyday lives, in places we know so well?  How do we meet the familiar with the eyes of a fascinated stranger?

Before I fall asleep (tomorrow is going to be a LONG day of driving), I'm reading The Holy Man by Susan Trott, a simple and fascinating book that Roné took off her book shelf for me to read on the way home.  All kinds of people approach the "holy" man to solve their problems, and--as we see--the approach has the solution built in, not what the holy man tells them to do.

I read the first half of the book last night and thought about it throughout the day.  Whether the word is "holy" or "enlightened" or whatever, the message is the same: It's not what someone else tells us that transforms us; it's our intention to keep changing from the beginning of any journey to the end.  A journey that doesn't change us or make us bigger is just a vacation.

Heading East

The title of this tab is now inaccurate--as I'm traveling east.
Heading out soon from this motel in Phoenix toward San Antonio.

My thoughts are all over the map--as you can tell from my four Phoenix posts.

Tennyson said, "I am a part of all that I have met."
And all the people we've ever met become parts of us.

We don't just leave our hearts in San Francisco; we leave parts of it everywhere we go.
And every little pencil point dot on the map that we've ever been moves right into our hearts, stretching the map of what we know and love.

Heading east, I'm thinking of Georgia, too, my homeland: a place of kudzu and biscuits and gravy and church music and peaches and pies and shelling peas on the back porch.   A time when you met your incoming guests at the airplane door, no security checks.

Heading east, I'm thinking of my writing groups and San Antonio friends.  I'm thinking of Halloween  and wondering where I put my witch's hat from last year.

It's time to go home.  I've had a gracious plenty of everything!

A Gracious Plenty

Mimi married when she was very young--maybe 19 or 20.
When Papa died, they had been married for 70 years!

She had Carlene when she was 23; Carlene had me when she was 23; and I had Day when I was 23.

At 20, Carlene married my daddy, Lloyd.  When he died at 80, they had been married for 57 good years.  I wondered if she would ever be the same again, and for a while, she was sadly changed.  But now (and he would be proud of this) she is her vibrant self.

Here is the picture of Mimi as a young mother.  She had five children, but the oldest  died when he was ten.  The remaining four are still living, though the two sons are not as healthy as their sisters.

Far left: Carlene (the oldest of the four, born in 1925)

Next to her: Dot (six years younger)

The little one is David; the taller son is Richard.

Papa is at the top of the photo, and Mimi is far right.

Mimi was an orphan and she lived in an orphanage until she was adopted and moved to Georgia.

Toward the end of her life, after Papa died, she used to take us out to Cracker Barrel when we visited her in Georgia.  Here she is with Will, my son, when he was a teenager:

When it was time to leave Cracker Barrel and we offered to pay, she'd say, "It will be my pleasure."

(Until Papa died, she'd always cooked full meals for us at their house: fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and butter beans and corn.)

She was one of those grandmothers who wanted you to have at least two servings of everything.  "Oh have some more!" she'd say--when you were too stuffed to move.

But when she'd had enough, she always said, "Thank you, but I've had a gracious plenty."

Eighty what???

Yesterday, Carlene drove down to Dot's (her sister) to spend the week. It's a three-hour drive.

Dot and I have a competition: who's the better host when Carlene visits?
If I don't do something like Dot does it, Carlene will teasingly say, "Well, Dot does it!"

When those two get together, they laugh so hard it's hard to tell what they are saying when they call.
One talks and the other says, "Tell her so-and-so" and then they both are talking at once.

Yesterday when they called, they told me they were doing a puzzle, then they were going to visit their brother Richard, then they were going out to eat.

"What's the puzzle a picture of?" I asked.

"Jesus and a little sheep," I think is what they said.  "And the words LOST NO MORE."

"They make puzzles of Jesus?" I asked....

But they didn't hear me because they were both laughing by then at something else.

If you could hear those two laughing or talking or singing, you'd think they were forty-something, not eighty-something.  I've been puzzling about why they stay so forever young:

They don't smoke, drink, or eat junk food--at least not that I know of.
They walk.  Carlene walks three miles a day.
They grew up on a farm eating organic before there was a difference.
They are Mimi's daughters--and Mimi lived a healthy life until she died at 96.

But they also like to show off!
I was telling them one day that I could no longer squat.  Both of them at once got into a full squat, and Dot said, "Like this?"

I have a picture of them squatting--a skill I've been trying to bring back into my repertoire of movement for the past four years--but I can't find it.

Here's Carlene doing one at my house--just to show you what I mean.

And here's a picture I took of Carlene holding a little toy school bus I gave her.  She likes to say that "every day we get on the little yellow school bus"--meaning that every day we learn something new.

I may not have the squatting down pat yet, but I do have the legacy of the little yellow school bus.
Whenever something happens that is "bad," Carlene says, "It's just tuition."
It's just the cost of learning.  Or--as Kevin Kling said yesterday, "Wisdom is not free.  You have to pay for it."

Dot and Carlene are two wise women.  They make me laugh.  I will try to stop being jealous that they can squat!

Conversations

When I started this trip and this blog,  I didn't know then what I know now: that it would open up such great conversations!  Due to limited phone coverage and road noise, my part of the conversations have been these blog posts.  But what I've read has been every bit as important as what I've written.

(In my earlier draft upon arriving at the motel last night, I quoted from several of your emails--then decided I should have checked with each writer before quoting you.  I'm going to wait until I get home and ask each of you if I can use your actual words.)

For now, however, I want to share with you some of the ways that the blog started conversations:

Early on, as part of my birthday present from Carlene, she began writing "glimpses"--which I posted on the blog.  Because she's the only person in the world who has known me all of my life, it's meant so much to know that while she's following my roads on the atlas and reading the blog, she also took the time to back-track into the past and remind me of ways that who I am now is who I've always been.  Aren't we all?  How often do we realize that who we are when we're most happy is who we've always been when we've been free to do what we love?

(Here is a picture Barbel took of Carlene and me when we visited her in Albuquerque a year ago)

(And here we are, we three--Day, Carlene, and me--two and a half years ago)

Nellie and I graduated high school together, then lost touch for decades.  When we found each other again all those years later, a whole new friendship began--but one that built on the foundation of shared history.

Imagine the trust it took, on both our parts, to embark on a three-week trip to Italy together, when we'd never traveled anywhere together before!  (Unless you count the Beta Club convention in high school....)

Not only was Nellie a great traveling companion, but she taught me how to keep from getting totally lost in another country.  She, unlike me, read travel guides!  When we arrived in Italy and she said we'd board the vaporetto to get to our hotel, I had no idea what a vaporetto was going to be.

I used to love having dinner with  Nellie at the end of the day in Italy and reading her artistic impressions of the day--photographs and collages and drawings of what she'd seen that day.

Here we are when Nellie and Art (yes, her husband is named Art!)

visited San Antonio a few years ago)

Here we are when Deb and I visited her in Florida a few years ago.

(That's Nellie in the middle)

Letters from Barbel who, because she back-packed solo all over the world (for four years) three decades ago, knows what it is to travel alone.  She knows what it is to  search "from the head to the soul" within one's self.   She has written me letters along the way as my "ghost rider" and each letter has cast a new light on the freedom of this kind of travel.

Barbel is, above all, enthusiastic! Whatever she does, she does it wholeheartedly!

(Here's Barbel with an egg in her mouth on the day we went to Ojo Caliente

and stopped to take cemetery pictures

a month ago)

Daily letters from Linda Kot reflecting on each post and recalling times she and Steve were in the places that I've written about.  Reading her letters every morning has sent me out on the day's journey feeling that we've just had a conversation.  In one, she told me about the time she was "nudged by a doe" when she and Steve were camping in Mt. Tamalpais.

(Linda will be holding someone's dog in almost every picture I have of her!  

She has never met a dog she didn't fall instantly in love with!) 

This picture was taken six years ago when I visited her on Cape Cod.

(And here she is with Joy, this past November, in Texas) 

There are moments in any endeavor when I question myself: should I be doing this?  Am I just being self-indulgent?

But then I remember a conversation with Janet Penley this summer when each of us was faced with doing something difficult.  Janet said, "When we do the hard thing, we're doing it not just for ourselves but for all of us." I had never thought of it that way before!

(The email I want to quote here reiterated that in such a wonderful way that reading it almost made me cry with gratitude!)

Here's Janet being my first passenger in the new Mini...

Maybe whatever quirky or hard or silly things we do, maybe especially the "self-indulgent" or impractical things, have a way of bolstering the courage in all of us.  I'd like to think so!  I know that when the tables are turned and it's I who's observing someone else following the beat of a different drummer, I think: I can do that!

(Or my own version of "that")

Before leaving Los Angeles, Brad said something that describes what we're all doing as we write or make art (or appreciate write and art): "When you describe what you see, it makes me see more myself."  Maybe that is exactly what it's all about!

As I left the next morning, Rone--who is a Giver Extraordinaire--made me a sandwich for the road and gave me two of her books ("Pass them on after you read them)  and sent me home "with a great big hug to Janet" Oglethorpe, our much-loved mutual friend who introduced us.  When I started this trip, I didn't know Brad or Meara or Linda Jordon or Rivka--and now look: four new friends!

So many friendships begin with chance encounters, then the circle--the ongoing conversation that is life--grows bigger and bigger and bigger!

Phoenix, Arizona

Today was a long, mellow day of driving--no stopping to speak of.
Just arrived in Phoenix and decided to spend the night here.

It's a little sad leaving new (to me) places and friends; it's also good to go home, to my own house and San Antonio friends and family.  My robotic GPS voice tells me I still have well over 900 miles to go--which I should be able to do by Thursday night if I don't dawdle.

Interstate10 is less interesting than 40 was: not close enough to Sedona to be tempted to return, no trains yet.  After last night's happy send-off party and  farewell to Rone and family, it took me two hours to get through Los Angeles traffic.  "Traffic detected ahead," Our Lady said, routing me through a maze of streets in the city, finally landing me back on the main highway, then back to Interstate 10, which will take me all the way home.

I've been thinking today about conversation: specifically the ones I'm having with myself and the ones I'm having with those of you who are following this blog.  I've listened to several podcasts of "On Being" with Krista Tippett: interviews with writers, artists, scientists, and theologians in various traditions.  She's such a great interviewer that it's been like eavesdropping on conversations--with Kevin Kling, Christian Wiman, the Dalai Lama's translator, Marie Howe and others.

Check out this site: Onbeing.org.

Kevin Kling--a writer and humorist--was born with a deformed left arm, and his right arm is paralyzed from a motorcycle accident.  He talked about losses: of broken hearts, lost limbs, losses of persons.  Krista brought up another loss: the incremental losses that come with aging.

"We can never get back what we've lost," he said, "But we can heal.  We can even fall in love again after a heart break, but it's not the same heart that loves again."

He has such a sense of humor--even about his own losses--that it's inspiring to listen to him as he looks at the ways his condition has been part of his way of being in the world. "If you're able-bodied," he says, "It's a temporary condition."  And this: "Wisdom isn't cheap.We have to pay for it."

Car reverie in the desert evoked made me think about people who are no longer here. Losses seem to go underground for long stretches, but then we hear or see something that brings that person back....

A year ago, I was receiving daily emails from my dear friend Gary who would die in November.  He was never self-pitying as he saw the end coming.  He described the deer, the painted buntings (that looked like a child colored them with crayons), and he told me about his piano gigs. He played several gigs a week at nursing homes, and even those with impaired memories would revive when he played Forties love songs.  You could almost imagine their faces at twenty, dancing, in love again.

When I visited him the last time, he asked me from his hospice bed to go up to his study and get a CD of his music.  I remember standing there in his study lined with books and CDs, thinking: this is one of the places he was alive and present; this is the place where he sat and wrote e-mails that were like poems; he won't ever be in this room again.

Today, I was listening to him play as I drove across California and Arizona desert.  When I showed up to listen (which I now wish I'd have done way more than I did), he always played, "Georgia on My Mind" for me.  Today when I heard that one, I had to pull off the road for a few minutes.

One of his last emails to me ended this way: "I don't  know what to say.  I've never died before."

Just before leaving San Antonio, I got my last New Yorker.  He'd been subscribing to the magazine for me for the past four years. On the cover was a girl sitting on a rock at the beach.

In the ways we try to keep the people we love alive, I had taken that as his message for starting this trip: go to the water, go to the rocks.  I realized yesterday that I'd not done one thing I meant to do: to have a picture of myself taken sitting on the rocks by the Pacific, so I approached a sun-burned stranger in a bikini and asked her to take this shot, for me, for Gary.

Just a quick note this morning--as I see my laptop battery is in the red--before beginning the final 1377 miles toward home....

I felt like a marathon winner closing in on the finish line yesterday:

I texted Rone:  "I'm in Santa Barbara, okay now I'm in Venturs, okay I think I need to pull over and take a quick nap."

Rone's texts to me: "You're just ninety miles; you're just an hour; you're almost here; we have ice cream; you can do it!"

Is that how it is for runners heading toward the tape, having that voice in the ear saying "You can do it! Just one more mile.  We have ice cream!"?

Linda came over in her roadster; Brad and Meara and Rone made dinner; I brought sweets from the bakery in San Luis Obipso--what an amazing and unforgettable close for a journey with my Southern California friends and travel advisors!

Before packing up and leaving California and heading home, I am sending a giant hug to these adorable people who started me on the California trek and welcomed this weary traveler for a Texas send-off!

I will take memories of your hospitality with me everywhere I go from here!
Big love to you all!

Linda Jordon in her super cool roadster.

Linda Jordan and Rone and Meara and Brad. Woodland Hills Near Los Angeles.

3:15 Monday morning

It has been a month since I pulled out of my driveway in Texas!  Looking through the photos last night took me back to the beginning, then all the stops along the way that I never would have encountered if I hadn't followed my inner GPS and left, with only a vague sense of where I wanted to go, needed to go, at this particular crossroad. 

I chose a Travelodge last night.  The TV is snowy, the Internet keeps going on and off, and the clock keeps flashing the wrong time.  I woke up in the middle of the night just now and looked at the clock: 8:49.  "That's funny," I said to myself.  "I'm still sleepy."

And so, as it turns out, it was only 3:15 and I get to go back to sleep.

Then, when I wake up again, I get to drive to Rone's house--stopping along the way to wave a temporary farewell to the Pacific Ocean.   

I tried to post a picture of Rone and me last night. That picture refused to post, so I'll ask Brad to take another tonight or in the morning.  

I'm thinking this morning of David Whyte's poem that begins: "When your eyes are tired, the world is tired, too."  He goes on in that poem to say that sometimes we have to go out into the night "where the night can find us."  He ends by saying the best words in the poem:  "The world is made to be free in."

When he was writing that poem, he tells us later, he got to the part that said: "You must learn one thing"--and he didn't know what he was going to write!  He sat there and waited, asking himself "What is the one thing we must learn?"  And then the words appeared on the page: "The world was made to be free in." 

At various points in my life, I have visited the night.  Not only have I gotten up out of bed and ridden around in the actual darkness, but I've experienced dark inside myself.  I know it will lift, it always does, but when I'm there, it's like being inside a black cloud: can't see clearly, can't think my way out of it.  Only after it's lifted can I claim what I've brought back from that dark place that I couldn't have gotten in the zippity doo dah light.  

When we call that darkness depression, we seek relief from it in whatever ways we know how.  Running as far as we can from it is what some people call a "geographical cure."  Taking pills is a pharmaceutical cure.   Telling everyone we know who's willing to listen is a conversational cure. (I've done all three and more.) 

When I left on this trip, an episode I was calling "a funk" wasn't too far back in the rearview mirror.  I wasn't running from it, I was just following my intuition: that I'd reached a place that needed space around it for a while.   Even in the odysseys we've all read about, every journey starts out at a crossroad, even though we don't always know it, and the questions that are looming: now what? which road for the next chapter of my life?

Just as traveling with a friend is a great way to nourish that particular and unique friendship, traveling solo is a way to nourish friendship with our own selves.  At times, I actually overhear myself talking out loud to myself--like a good parent, like a best friend.  "It's okay," I say, "You're not lost at all. You're doing just fine." 

When I hear the other voices--equally present in my psyche--I have time to ask: where did that come from?  Who said that?   If the words are  not in accord with freedom (since that's what the world was made for)--I can see those mischievous voices for what they are and send them on their way, hopefully to permanent silence.

After Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," the second-most often-echoing poem in my mind is Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"--the one that begins: "You do not have to be good...."

Since that line alone contradicts everything every one of us grew up thinking was the main requirement of being a human being, it's radical.  Radical: tears at the roots of.  To hear someone say, "You do not have to be good"--shakes up everything, turns us around in our tracks.

Since kindness infuses every poem of Mary Oliver, we know she's not telling us to turn into scoundrels or to neglect the best in ourselves; instead, she's shaking our tree a little, like the wind shakes the sycamore trees with the golden leaves, the ones that grow so profusely in certain parts of California.  

If the first half of every life is devoted to learning how to be good and responsible, a good citizen of the world, the second half seems to be a time of letting go of what used to fit but doesn't any more.  The sycamore doesn't go away; it just lets go of its leaves in beauty and freedom.  

Last Sunday in California

As you probably know, the three westernmost roads in California are Highway 1--the scenic coastal highway, including Big Sur; 101, cutting through acres of farmland; and Highway 5, the fastest route, but all desert.

I was so glad  that I decided to return to 101--as I'd taken Route 1 on my way north.  Fruit stands advertising Merry Cherries and pomegranates, strawberries and oranges were happy discoveries all along the road between where I was last night and 101, including a large farm stand called Casa De Frutes.

When I got back to 101, I spent a couple of hours in the Steinbeck National Center in Salinas.  I watched a biography of Steinbeck and scenes from movies based on his books.  A docent offered to take my photo  in a Model T that represented the cars in East of Eden.

Steinbeck attended Stanford sporadically for six years, then left without earning a degree.  He worked in the farms of Salinas alongside hoboes.  During that time, he anguished over the fate of the Dust Bowl migrants, which led to the writing of Grapes of Wrath--a book that he believed would "never be an important book."  It was, however.  The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and his worries about money were over.

My favorite part was seeing the actual truck and camper in which Steinbeck traveled with his gray standard poodle, Charley.  After winning the Nobel Prize in 1962, Steinbeck (already wealthy from his novels) was devastated by the negative criticism in the press, and he never wrote another novel again.  J. Edgar Hoover had called him a "dangerous subversive", and his books were banned in some quarters.   Travels With Charley was written after his novels: Tortilla Flat, The Red Pony, Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden....and several others.  With his third wife, he traveled to England and called that the "happiest year of my life."

Steinbeck shied away from fame, always preferring the process of writing to the books themselves.  "It's the writing, the journey, that matters," he said.

Steinbeck was born in 1902. His mother Olive was said to have 'infused a sense of enchantment" in her own two children and her students.

All morning I'd been wondering about the crops grown in the Salinas valley.  At the Steinbeck center, I saw a film that focused on "the most fertile valley in the world"--a place that has attracted farmers from countries all over the world.  There's cauliflower, beans, lettuce, garlic, artichokes, broccoli, as well as many others I've never even heard of.  It would be wonderful (and probably encourage healthier eating) if all children could see the fields where these beautiful fruits and vegetables come from.

As I drove away, I saw a field covered with little golden balls.  I had to pull off, to see them up close.  In a town called, appropriately, Greenfield, I wended my way through the farmland and discovered that those little balls were yellow onions.  I had never before seen onions growing!  I drove through fields of rich green Romaine lettuce and more onions, and wound up in a street party--the annual Harvest Festival of Greenville.  An ear of corn (you slather them with mayonnaise here) served as supper.

A pomegranate, a peach, and a bag of purple tomatillos are now parked beside my pumpkin on the floor of the Mini.  I don't believe I'll ever again take the variety of fruits and vegetables for granted again!  Mother Nature is endlessly fertile.

What was on the radio were traditional hymns, the ones I grew up hearing, and the ones I grew up playing on the piano. I'm not a great fan of more contemporary hymns, but those old songs I sing along with and find my fingers moving on the wheel--my keyboard without keys.  I remembered "riding around" when I was a child, my parents singing these wonderful old songs together.  I remembered that while they were singing, I was looking out the windows at rows and rows of peach trees, fields of cotton, kudzu growing along the road banks.

One of the things I love about riding around in the larger neighborhood of this continent is re-living moments that infused in me a sense of road enchantment!

The cover that inspired this journey

White car at White Sands

Barbel behind bars

Albuquerque

At the art opening. Albuquerque

Linda and Barbel in Albuquerque

Eucalyptus branch for Charlotte

Morro Bay at sunset

Big Sur Day

Marin County

"What are those leaves all over your front seat?"

Asked the woman at the window at McDonalds.....

She didn't know; I didn't know; Rone just told me: Sycamores!

Red hat and the dunes

Picking a pumpkin near Santa Cruz

Pumpkins at Casa de Frutes

Artichokes

Tomatillos

When they turn purple the salsa is sweet

And the docent took a picture of me in an East of Eden car

Just spent a very enjoyable hour or two in Salinas at the National Steinbeck Center.

Breaking my own rule: not to backtrack.

And remembering another: Don't surrender a trip to a GPS!  You might as well be married to an Operation Haul-Ass driver.  Yes, it gets you there faster, but seldom is the fast route worth the ride.  No more adventures?  No more scenic byways?  Just dessert?

Our Lady got me almost back to Highway 5 last night, but all I see on this route is more desert all the way home.

Thanks to emails from my band of travel advisors in Southern California, and the prospect of seeing some or all of them near LA, I'm thinking a little back tracking never hurt anybody.

I will stop saying bad things about Motel Sixes.  The man who owns this one is from India and very knowledgeable about routes from here to anywhere.  He just explained to me what Highway 5 is going to look like: "Exactly like this for many miles," he said, "Nothing else."

So here I go: backtracking 40 minutes to 101 and down the coast line again!

YAY!

This route feels like a neighborhood I know now, at least a little bit--and I'm looking forward to seeing it one more time before I hit the long endless stretch of Highway 10 into Texas.

Fog and Pumpkins

I left Bonnie's early while she was sleeping.
It only takes a few days  to kindle a friendship and to feel a little sad when you drive away, knowing it will be a long time until you might come this way again.

One of the things we do on any journey, I think, is to return to places that have been magical for us.  I hadn't had enough of the wine country.  I have only tasted one wine, by the way, a pomegranate wine this afternoon that didn't appeal to me; I prefer my fruits baked into pies and tarts and turnovers.

But driving along, I always feel like my car tires are drawing on the pavement, a big circle with lots of ins and outs.  If I had unlimited time, I'd try to be sure to leave no breaks in the lines.  I'd try to leave no road untouched.

Someday I'd like to take a different kind of trip: stopping in a place for a long time, not trying to cover so much territory but getting to know the one place up close: taking the time to get to know the cooks and construction workers and mamas and babies and dogs.  Maybe when I'm seventy, I'll do it that way.

But there were still a couple of things I'd meant to see on this trip:  I still wanted to drive up Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County--and to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The trip up the mountain was slow and curvy but well worth the drive.  All the way up and back I was making that OM sound we make in yoga, but it wasn't because I was trying to be all spiritual; it was because my leg was hurting so bad I was trying to distract myself, the way I do when I have to have my blood tested--which I'd rather get a mammogram or a root canal than to do!

I hate to complain--but I'm going to indulge myself just for a minute, then move on.

From the top of the mountain you can see all across the Bay area,  looking down on clouds.  It's kind of like being in an airplane except you can stand in one place and keep looking and looking as long as you like.

I stopped at a diner before getting on the bridge.  I had been across the Bay Bridge once at night and the Richmond Bridge several times, but this was--I thought--the scary one.  Actually, it was a piece of proverbial carrot cake compared to the hairy experience of driving the Bay Bridge at night--and I'd like to do it again someday with someone else driving so I can take pictures.  The Golden Gate people don't look too kindly on drivers getting out of their cars to snap pictures.  Or doing U-Turns.  There's actually a sign on the bridge saying "NO U-TURNS"--as if anyone would contemplate a U in the middle of five lanes of traffic.

Before submitting to Our Lady on GPS, I decided to "stop by" Half Moon Bay.  On the map, you know, it's only about half an inch from the Golden Gate Bridge, and even Our Lady estimated that it would take 20 minutes to get there.

I had thought that going there would be preferable to braving the traffic at Yosemite, but as it turns out, my idea was not an original one.  The last ten miles to Half Moon Bay took about an hour and a half.  There we were, millions of people, creeping along, like a giant metal snake.

As it turned out, Half Moon Bay was having a Pumpkin Festival.  I thought: oh this will be fun!  I love pumpkins, oh boy, oh boy!

As the traffic crept along, I noticed that my gas gauge was down to two bars.  And the closer I got, the more plastic inflatable superheroes and jumping castles I saw--so I decided to quickly exit Half Moon Bay and drive on down the road to Santa Cruz.

Fog was thick, giving the impression of driving in a dream.  If I hadn't been so worried about where to find the next gas station, (now down to one bar)  I'd have turned around several times on the road between Half Moon and Santa.  I glimpsed a beautiful field of pumpkins, with children and parents carting wheelbarrows full of them, the fog touching the tops of the pumpkins in every direction.

There are always so many voices going on in my head.
One urges me to "hurry up" and get on down the road.

Another voice is really nice.  I like her way better than the other one.

She says, "You just take your time, Sweetheart, and see every single thing you want to see, do everything that calls to you.  Who knows when you'll pass this way again?"

The first voice finally led me to the gas station, just in the nick of time, but then I kicked her out for the rest of the trip.

My car is so full I picked a little bitty one....

California Pumpkins on Yellow Tractor

Friday Off The Beaten Track

I was riding along Highway 5, wishing I could name all the fruits and vegetables whizzing by the car: Pumpkins were easy, fields and fields of orange, red, sage-colored, and white pumpkins.   Apples of every variety, pears and cherries, artichokes and kale, peppers and pomegranates and pistachios: does everything come from California?

The landforms--smaller than mountains but gentle round mounds--were the color of manna.  Whoever painted those indelible manna pictures in my Bible story book must have set up her easel along Highway 5.  As  child I used to look and look at those pictures, wondering how the Israelites managed to make cakes out of straw.

Hay is a major crop along that stretch, stacked in neat rectangular bales.  The sun lit the hay like art objects.  In one field, I saw about twenty human beings working the land, not with combines and tractors and plows, but with rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows.

National Public Radio fizzled out along this road, and Rush Limbaugh came on: a grating voice, angry at everybody. I clicked him off.  Further down the road, I tried again to get some music or conversation, and a preacher was shouting in the same tone.

You know the brand of preaching I'm talking about: the man has all the answers (and the hutzpah to think his answers apply to everyone out there in Radioland), shouting until his voice must be raw. This one reminded me of the revivals in the little country churches in Georgia--specifically the one in which I met my Ex (and only) husband.

Further down the road a stone's throw from Clear Lake, I stopped to get a sandwich and heard a woman in the next car yelling: "Shut up!" As she continued shouting, I looked to see who it was she was yelling at, expecting some wizened old man in overalls to emerge from the back seat, or maybe a sullen teenaged boy who'd been pestering her for miles.

I went into the diner, ordered a sandwich, and when I returned, I saw that there was only one other person in that unfortunate car, and it was an infant wrapped in a pink blanket. The little girl couldn't have been more than three months old, far too little to understand her grandmother's words.

I looked all morning at the generous earth,  the patches of countless shades of green stitched together so neatly that it would look like a magnificent quilt from the sky.

And yet, I thought all morning of that little girl, so tiny, who--unlike me--couldn't switch off the voice of fury in her car.  I wondered all day what was to become of her, being silenced before she even had words to speak.

There are so many good voices on the radio--(I'm partial to Scott Simon on NPR, who's a great storyteller and interviewer and who has a great laugh). Most  people I meet  are easy-going, live-and-let-live, and kind. But the ones that are so stuck in anger always make me wonder: what happened that shuttled them into permanent anger?

I could have stayed on Highway 5.  (Carlene informed me today that I had mistakenly called it Highway 15 in an earlier post).  But I had a goal: to reach the hot springs Roné and Dr. Linda had told me nor to miss.  I drove through the back roads and passed Harbin Springs then turned around and consulted my email from Linda for directions.  No major signs, it's hidden in the backwoods near Middleton.

It was like going back to the Sixties: a very low-key natural area, no cell phones allowed, pools of varying temperatures, and little wooden houses where you could get massages and body wraps.  I got a half-hour massage, hoping it would release the pain in my hips which had been plaguing me all day.  It didn't do that entirely--but it did help, that and a long soak in the hottest of the pools.  I had that peaceful easy feeling, driving away, wishing I'd arranged to spend the night.

Because night was coming on and the roads curvy, I decided to drive--after a walk-about in Calistoga--to Bonnie's house in Santa Rosa, then head for home in the morning. If you ever want to travel in the Santa Rosa area, Bonnie's house is the place to be.  She and I stayed up talking til nearly midnight and she even read me an adorable children's story she'd written, and I showed her Joy's books on Amazon--which she thought were beautiful.

...........

When I stayed with Bonnie a week ago, she'd also told me to go to the hot springs, so I was proudly telling her about my adventure there.  I wasn't going to go back to Texas and miss something that THREE of my friends had so highly recommended!

"I've been trying to get my son to go with me," she said.

I did, I think, a double take.

"I wouldn't go there with my son!" I said.  "For that matter, I'm not sure I'd go with anyone I know."

She looked perplexed.

"I mean, you know, since it's clothing optional," I said.

Now she really looked confused!

"It wasn't like that when I went there two years ago," she said.

It suddenly dawned on us both that we were talking about entirely different springs.  The one she'd suggested was Indian Springs in Calistoga.  At Indian Springs, people wear swim suits.

I, on the other hand, had been to Harbin Springs where most people walk along the paths--old or young, fat or skinny, tattooed or plain--in the Altogether!

(I have no pictures for this story.  Cameras are not allowed.)

"But wait! There's more!"

Just as I felt myself folding up my wings a bit earlier today, I spread them out and flew a bit more.  It was a spectacular day, one I'll write more about tomorrow....

I followed the advice of my trusted friends and went to Harbin Springs and it was wonderful!  Next time I'm going to plan ahead and go during the week and stay overnight.

Tonight, I returned to Bonnie's wonderful "home away from home" in Santa Rosa and am about to head to bed.  Will write more in the morning--or in the middle of the night.

I so appreciate those of you who are following along and sending emails!

Talk about "angels on my bumper"--I have so many good angels in the car with me I'm never lonely for a minute!