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!